High Water Mark

I picked up a copy of 'Good Poems for Hard Times' selected by Garrison Keillor. I flipped it open almost eerily to this poem by David Shumate:


High Water Mark

It's hard to believe, but at one point water rose to this level. No one had seen anything like it. People on rooftops. Cows and coffins floating through the streets. Prisoners carrying invalids from their rooms. The barkeeper consoling the preacher. A coon hound who showed up a month later forty miles downstream. And all that mud it left behind. You never forget times like those. They become a part of who you are. You describe them to your grandchildren. But they think it's just another tale in which animals talk and people live forever. I know it's not the kind of thing that you ought to say . . . But I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up.

(reprinted without permission)