Watershed Moments

painting from fineartamerica.com 

Watershed Moments

“It’s hard to see a river all at once; even at the

headwaters, you teeter on the edge of a

hundred tiny watersheds.”

--Lynn Culbreath Noel.

Prehistoric

When the earth was young,

its’ hydrologic cycles were brutal,

unchecked and over zealous.

The planet was covered with water,

and plagued with monstrous 

thunderstorms and hurricanes.

Evaporation

Our mother star, the sun, got busy

and boiled the surface 

of the infinite seas,

and the cycle slowed,

and land masses began

to jut up, forming atolls, islands

and continents.

Water vapor became mist and fog,

and it rose up like locusts

from horizon to horizon.

Transpiration

Sea plants became land plants.

Amphibious life crawled up

from out of the salty stew.

The plants need water,

but after sustenance, 

it passes through them

as they exhale and expel it.

Condensation

Mist and fog begins to cool

as it rises in the atmosphere,

creating great wooly herds

of clouds, which develop

dark fat sagging bellys

filled with rain and snow.

Precipitation

Rain, sleet, hail and snow

bombard the surface,

promoting growth,

and birthing lakes, ponds and puddles.

Run Off

Sometimes, an abundance of water

that is not absorbed or evaporated,

runs off and gathers into flood zones.

On the desert it becomes a flash flood.

Wherever this water congregates

at a common point, this is called

a watershed.

Percolation

Normally, a lot of water

can seep underground

and replenish the aquifers,

and form icy pockets 

of artesian goodness.

Life would not survive

without molecules that are

two parts hydrogen

and one part oxygen; if

we had gills, we’d breathe it too.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub