If the water was clean 윗물이 맑아야 아랫물이 맑지
Open the floodgates
Let the waters come in
So refreshing
Day after day
Piled up in a mire
A river flows
first a trickle
and then a torrent
The mountain mud makes a pretty picture
But in the kitchen I couldn't swim there
A mom doesn't work
Get a bucket
scoop it out with a dust pan
The river flows through us
But this river so merky
Was not the river I saw on TV
Instead of refreshing
I'm fighting centipedes
and itchy feelings
If only the water were clean on top
Then the water that flows would be clean here below.
Proof of cleaning the flood
This poem is based on the Korean proverb:
If the water was clean 윗물이 맑아야 아랫물이 맑지
Translated:
"When the water on top is clean
so also is the water on the bottom."
It is about social order. If the leaders on top are clean then the people also will be clean. This is true to some extent. The thing is the closer you get to the top the more difficult it is to stay clean.
As a teacher I'm glad that I have the students to keep me humble. They read my face and know if I am tired or if I really care. They are not afraid to say it because they are innocent and really want to know.
Before the kids I cannot just act one way. They know if my heart is there or not. Maybe my post quality is not so good but I am very active each day with these kids and now I get a bonus -- flood!!
There was a small river flowing in our first floor due to the continued rains. I cleaned it up and got the water out. The problem was that the mountain water runs off and blocks the drains. At first we used buckets and then a mop and the dust pan to scoop up the rest. Luckily we got it all for now but the kids will need a bath. They were jumping in that stuff.
This is my poem for day 71 in the 100 day poetry competition @d-pend.(Steemschool Discord) All images are from my cell phone camera or public domain.
Verse of the Day/ Genesis 7:11
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.”
Mineopoly Quote:
"Another one of those days... beep... beep ... beep"
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QTTA: (QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT)
Have you ever seen rain coming up?
I love you all.
For amazing adventure in English please follow @mineopoly mining the heart.
i don't think i've seen it rain so hard. at least in years.
and yes i've seen rain come up. stay safe!
Thank you @roundbeargames. I'm beginning to understand what this means, "It's not the heat but the humidity." It hasn't rained like this since the fall of 2009... At that time the whole first floor was flooded.
ah i remember 2009 too. what a disaster.. entire gangnam was flooded 😨
This is what the city built behind our house in 2009. It was running with water two days ago. Now it's dry.
I know now why you are so under the weather. Do take care. We have experienced this when the rivers flooded. Thankfully it did not enter the house but rains are still pouring down in the evenings and there are leaks from the roof in one place.
I like how you compare the water with the social order. same can be said of some whales here too, er. The more money, the more selfish, sadly.
Take care of yourself and are you on @steemiteducation If not, please join
Hi @sayee. Thank you for the comment and suggestion. You are right but I don't want to point fingers at anyone. I feel I am responsible as well as anyone else. I can point to people who are promoting Steemit outside Steemit. That is the way we will grow. @aggroed offered 10 SBD each to the first 30 people who promoted Steemit's 1 M users on 3 social media sources outside Steemit. @pappapepper promoted Steemit through his you tube channel with 50,000 views.
It is really up to us to keep Steemit growing.
I have used @steemiteducation and completed their homework assignments and used their tag and promoted posts in their discord and have even been on trending section of the #steemiteducation tag but with no response from @steemiteducation at all. There was no comment, no upvote and no welcome to the discord channel. They seem to me like the Seinfeld Soup Nazi of Steemit education curation. I don't know what they want. And I've read their posts and tried to curate there but got bored. The internet is not worth my time if I'm not at least smiling. So I stopped using their tag and discord. Thank you the invitation. I posted a link in their education post promotion again today. I wrote at least 50 education posts and tagged #steemiteducation but never got any response. I just figured they don't like my style. That's alright for me. I like @thesteemengine. I just think education posts should be a little entertaining and the English should be easy to read. I like @snowpea's education posts. She is really bright and uses activities that stimulate learning.
Sorry if I didn't have any good experience with @steemiteducation yet... but you asked.
Still raining here...
I understand totally. TAke care dear
That's a great proverb, definitely holds some truth to it. You worked it into the poem so well also! Sorry to hear about the real life flood - not just these metaphorical ones. Hope you're managing to stay dry :)
The rain is finally slowing up here @lazarus-wist. Thank you for your comment and concern. this weekend will be a four day weekend so I will have plenty of time to get rid of some stuff from our house and also meet some friends. Have a great weekend.
This is an interesting piece. I liked the vivid imagery. The first two stanzas evoke a feeling of helplessness to nature's seemingly random choices. The water becomes an unwelcome visitor dispite its charms.
This stanza is a little awkward to me, but that's why I like it. It's interesting. It makes me think. The humor inherent in thinking of swimming in a kitchen helps to give the poem a tone of preservance through trial. I like it.
Here is another example of awkward imagery that is effective because of its strangeness. I wonder why a mom doesn't work. What is being said? Is it that a mom would usually work, but in this instance the mess is even too much for someone so competent? Intriguing.
One thing that was a little too awkward was the line.
I'm not sure if it is a misspelling of murky, or if something more is attempting to be said. I looked up the word in the urban dictionary and the definition kind of fit, so it is possible that it isn't a misspelling. The urban dictionary defines merky this way: adj. used to describe a disgusting or nasty person. This, if taken in context with the description of what the proverb has to say about corrupt leaders got me thinking. Maybe it was intentional?
Regardless, I had a lot of fun with this poem and the description of the mess and the muddy children. Lol. 😎
I thought about your comment for a while. Thank you for taking time to consider what I wrote @acousticsteveo.
I think the mom line is a Freudian slip. My wife was nagging me to stop using the computer and that I was wasting my time. And to watch the kids and help them etc... Well... Mop was replaced with mom at that point. Later I noticed and decided to keep it.
Merky is totally intentional.
As in definition 3:
"...you merky dumbass you found those on the ground you don't know where they've been."
There is no misspelling here.
Finally swimming through the kitchen is what happened the last time it rained like this 9 years ago. That was a headache. Since then the city has terraced the mountain and put in a flood canal so it won't ever happen that bad again. This also creates a nice garden area in the back of our house where we can plant.
I know I got to check up on your posts. I am a little behind as I took about two days off of Steemit.
Thanks for all the insights. I value them. 😎