Another Flood

She started making piles of wood.
Someone saw her and said,
No one uses wood anymore!

She kept making the piles of wood
until they were piled high enough
to reach every man at eye level.

Good enough piles of wood
to make a small raft from,
each gets his own raft, she said.

I had asked her Why the wood,
I was standing near the man
who thought she was daft.

The man who said we use metals,
and plastics, and different alloys,
we do not play with the toy of wood!

He said this and laughed;
a couple others in the small audience,
save me and a shy girl, laughed too.

But still, it turned out,
each had his own raft,
which she crafted with utmost skill.

And I’ve got time to kill,
she boasted, and painted her own raft
brilliant colors, gave the vessel a name.

She called it Courage and painted it
a bright orange, a magenta,
a green and a teal.

We who looked on, ready with our rafts
were still unsure what was coming
until it did, until the waters came.

Until we were doomed but for our rafts,
until we rocked and rolled with the waves,
until we cried out to the builder Thank you.

Without you, we would have looked
like tragic fools, trying to swim!
This is impossible to swim!

We jubilated and became
consummate sailors,
we took to the pounding sea.