Haibun: Managed Water
Sometimes when I write this prose part I wonder if I’m repeating myself? Or maybe it’s just that there’s a rhythm to the natural world and the world of us people?
As I sit with the Salt River and it’s water high up against its banks—a current that reminds grown men of their limits— I sit with another spring and the swollen rivers. Most rivers I’ve known were the spring melting of snow and days of cold, cold rain, but not here. Here in the Sonoran Desert our rivers swell from rain and the decisions of water management who control the dams.
Just about all water in Arizona is controlled, irrigated, managed and may be mismanaged. So, as each new building goes up, so do the lawns needing sprinklers, toilets to be flushed, and the rivers need more managing. Manage, manage manage! Manage until they have managed every drop to the highest payer.
But those days of no water when the desert reestablishes her size and power are far away, too far away to feel any threat. So we play in these rivers as if they are organic and I wonder, blissfully, if I’m repeating myself.
till summer shallows with sun
spring digs and hollows
