the fountain

I sat there on a wooden bench with iron railings at dusk. Golden September evening. Smoking a cigar and nursing a coffee from the shop across the street, I found myself staring at the fountain in the square. The endless trickling. The silent journey, unseen, of the water upwards, to the pinnacle spout, after which it trickles down in stages, filling black wrought-iron bowl- or plate-like platforms that fill and spill until the tricklings reach the pool at the bottom. And then repeat it, seemingly forever. It hypnotized me, mesmerized might be a synonym. But neither says it. Some kind of serene spellbound. The fountain so eternal in quotes but eternal enough for me right then. Is this why Rome is The Eternal City, because of so many eternal fountains? It reminds me of an old joke, the one about a search for the meaning of life with the guru delivering the punchline, "You mean it's not a fountain?" The joke was on us. Life as a punchline that nobody gets. The fountain tableau transported me to wonder: for how long have humans built fountains and how did they work before electricity was supplied? (Something I refuse to research. Why spoil the fun?) You'd think water fountains prove there is such a thing as a perpetual motion machine. Except. Except for water running out. And time running out in trickles like the fountain drippings. Naturally, even the fountains found in the wild, the ones we call waterfalls, are subject to the same rules of supply and impermanence. But enough of all that. The perfect light. (It was magical enough for four sets of professional photographers to stage and pose families, couples, and individuals for photos to be treasured on a wall until someone moves, storing the photos into an eternal anonymity in a box in a storage bin.) I snapped (screen-tapped) three photos on my phone, which is cheating for a wordsmith, isn't it. A magical hour magical enough for the golden retriever to want with all its canine desire to leap into that reflecting pool, only to be restrained by a tug on the leash. So, if I were in Italy and this were in a piazza it would be more worthy of memory and reflection? Who says. I rubbed the ash off the tip of the cigar against the bench, letting the ash fall to the brick pavers, careful to note no fire was possible. Earlier, I had placed the wooden match I had used to light the cigar and put it in the sink of the patina-painted inoperable water fountain nearby. Now that the lighted match was sufficiently cooled, I tossed it into the bed of ivy, where it landed in the dirt.