Tao of Water

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Recite the alphabet, a silent sing-song recitation, roll hands one over sudsy other, digits and thumb, up the wrist, rinsing and turning. Zed. Omega. I try it backwards. At night, when the doors are locked and the shades drawn, I rub ointment into my knuckles.

Water makes small choices; a pebble might turn a flood.

Raccoons wash their food, roll muddy tubers and tuna fish sandwiches one paw over the other down on rocks next to the stream. They dip digits in a can of stolen shortening and gobble handfuls of greasy fat, sneak into the house through the cat door and look for crackers in the cupboard, a time after Rogue died and before Mercy was whelped.

I faced a raccoon nearly as big as the dogs, spit-sapping shock at the size of it, looking for a weapon without shifting focus away, settling for the broom at hand. It came in June to pluck ripe strawberries along with the crowns. I let it.

A group of raccoons is called a gaze. After dusk one summer night, a gaze in the neighbor’s backyard killed their cat while they stood at the door and flicked the porch lights on and off and, stamping wailing thrashing, watched.

Hail comes to hammer the gutters, applause of thunder, rivulets run down the roof of the shed and pool in the strawberry bed.

Water makes small choices.

Author: Kim K. McCrea

Kim K. McCrea earned her BA in English before embarking on a career in technology and public service. Kim won Oregon Writers Colony 2018 essay award, Treefort’s 2017 Wild West Writing Prize, and was named runner-up in Cutbank 2018 Big Sky/Small Prose contest. Her creative nonfiction is featured in Cutbank, Tishman Review, Cagibi, and elsewhere; she is the author of the novel Pandora's Last Gift. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Kim lives in Oregon, where she studies the moon and stars and wanders with her Labrador in the rain.

14 thoughts on “Tao of Water”

  2. At one point, traveling across country by bike, I camped in a park. When I woke up in the morning a raccoon had unzipped my pannier and eaten most of a family size pack of fig newtons. Thousands of calories. I felt so bad for him. Maybe he became the dog sized one you saw after he digested all that food.

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      4. Probably not a bear. It nicely unzipped a bag. Plus, I was in a suburban park with baseball fields and a swimming pool. It was hard for me to be upset, the whole situation was pretty cute.

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  5. Agreed, about the vivid, clear quality of this. I actually save some of your posts for when I want to relish something really good, like this one.

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