The Water Park
A summer poem.
It was summer. The summer burned on us. It made marks on us like tire treads. It made marks on us like hamburger meal. We walked to the water park. There was water everywhere. The water glistened. It shot up in high spouts. It fell off of tall structures. It gethered around huge, sucking drains. There were people everywhere. There were huge crowds of people. The crowds of people glistened. They walked between the water. They walked under it and through it. The water spilled on and over us. Some chlorine burned our eyes. We put our goggles on. They made everything look different. There was screaming and shouting from different places. People were falling over sometimes. They were jumping over walls and fences. Someone blew a whistle. No one paid attention. The wave pool got clogged with inner tubes. A vortex formed. Also, the sun was hot. Ice cream sandwiches melted in our hands. Hot wings with Grim Reaper sauce made us sweat. A sketch artist drew a caricature of us. Someone else drew a laser gun in chalk on the sidewalk. We went around in circles. We decided we would climb up Water Mountain. We got splashed on a windy bluff. We were soaked on an exposed rock face. We found ourselves drenched on a high, narrow pass. Sodden dampness chewed at us. We felt like stacks of firewood after a long rain. Finally, we reached the mountaintop. It was a lonely place. We stood and made a survey. From this height, the entire world looked like it was in a petri dish. The water slides looked like falsely-colored nematodes. The people moving looked like single-cell bacteria. On the horizon was God’s Kingdom. Water came up between the cracks forming in His throne. The parking area curved away into the sky. We saw the people walking towards us. They were all one body, and so were we. Everyone looked like everyone else. It went on like this. The park stayed open all night.