Kerplunk<\/i>!<\/p>\n
The fist-size rock hit the middle of the shallow Lewis and Clark River and the sound it made was kerplunk<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I’d never heard an actual kerplunk<\/i> before and I liked the sound. It was deep and low and with a hint of gurgle.<\/p>\n
Bonnie and Clyde came over to investigate the sound.<\/p>\n
I picked up another rock, tossed it high into the air, and watched it splash into the river. Kerplunk<\/i>. I tossed another: Kerplunk<\/i>. I threw three rocks at the same time and her a triple Kerplunk<\/i>. I underhanded the largest rock I could pick find. Kerplunk<\/i>. I was kerplunking<\/i> the hell out of the river and I had no idea why.<\/p>\n
At one point in the madness, Bonnie and Clyde started barking. Kerplunks<\/i> and barks resounded up and down and the river and produced the most pleasing cacophony.<\/p>\n
The rock show ended and I noticed ripples rippling out from the last kerplunk<\/i>. I had never noticed ripples in an Oregon river before.<\/p>\n
They were beautiful. They were concentric stanzas of a perfect poem that drifted with the current and then disappeared. I knew there was perfect math in the ripples, too, but my brain couldn’t fathom the sine curves and amplitudes and equations of it all. Perhaps in another lifetime, I would return as a math teacher who taught the math of the watery universe through ripples in a river. My classes would march down to a river and toss rocks into it for their final. In this other math teaching lifetime, I might even double as the creative writing teacher and introduce mathematical concepts into love stories and have students write about the unknown variables in their lives.<\/p>\n
I picked up a rock and tossed it into the river. Then another, another. Ripples formed and then disappeared. I pitched three rocks in at the same time. Three separate ripples rippled into and out of one another. It was a ripple party.<\/p>\n
Something broke the spell and my mind rippled toward perhaps my favorite poem of all time, \u201cWe are Transmitters\u201d by DH Lawrence:<\/p>\n
A stanza reads:<\/p>\n
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n and we ripple with life through the days.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n good is the stool,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n content is the man.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I taught this poem to my creative writing students for years. In fact, I invented a one-period writing workshop around it. One of the prompts was: how will you ripple through the years? Another was: what is your rock that creates the ripple? Some of their rocks included: my music, my belief in God, my friendship, my love of animals. One student wrote his serenity would ripple through his family’s chaos and smooth it over.<\/p>\n Clyde moseyed over to hustle a treat. I pitched one in the water and it generated a tiny kerplunk<\/i> and ripple. Clyde’s body generated much larger ones.<\/p>\n I closed my eyes and tossed another rock, a final one for the morning. I winged it high into the sky, way upriver. I asked myself: how will I ripple through the rest of my years? The old ripple is gone forever. Good. I also asked: what will be the new rock to create the new ripple? How will I even find it?<\/p>\n Kerplunk<\/i>! I heard.<\/p>\n I waited for a few seconds and opened my eyes.<\/p>\n The ripple was coming my way.<\/p>\n (If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kerplunk! The fist-size rock hit the middle of the shallow Lewis and Clark River and the sound it made was kerplunk. I’d never heard an actual kerplunk before and I liked the sound. It was deep and low and with a hint of gurgle. Bonnie and Clyde came over to investigate the sound. I picked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,5,42],"tags":[417,206,40,205,13,207,88,416],"class_list":["post-3315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bonnie-and-clyde-files","category-meditations","category-poetry","tag-dh-lawerence","tag-dog-sanctuary","tag-dogs","tag-old-dogs","tag-oregon-coast","tag-oregon-rivers","tag-poetry","tag-ripple","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3317,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315\/revisions\/3317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}