The Fountain

I was outside one day,
watching a fountain at work.
Maybe work is the wrong word.
It was laughing: hurling itself
wrong-side up into the sky,
then splashing down again
on the back of gravity.

A small child wandered by
waving a curiously bent stick
which he heaved into the froth.
Instantly the water wrapped itself
tightly around that stick
and kept on moving, curling, jumping,
singing, without missing a beat.

Then the child found a stone
and threw that, too, into the fountain,
using all his eight year old strength.
As soon as the stone fell splat
into the quick shivering waterstreams
they kindly made way for it,
not even pausing to say ouch.

If that stone had landed
on my slow dense body,
I would own a purple bruise now
as evidence that my cells
are a hard band of soldiers,
trained to resist blows.

But not water. Not water.
Water simply splices open its arms
and lets everything tumble by
in a wash of forgiveness:
rocks, branches, people, fish,
even soda cans,
and keeps rushing onward
as if life were all about joy
and that's that.
Don't bother trying to stop me,
says each little waterdrop,
I'm too busy dancing.

Divine Love is like that.