Spring's Opening Curtain

Rivers roil,

ravage river banks.

Nature rushes

to be ready

for Spring's Opening Curtain.

In every rill and rivulet,

every branch and brook,

waters dance and leap;

Over rocks

Over water

as a can-can dancer

swishing petticoats

The  woodlands tune up

 with the tones of

red-brown,

and purple-gray

in tender branch and bramble.

But, where is the conductor?

Delia Nash

Life Flows even in white winter.

God has been spilling the sugar bowl these last few days! The land is beautiful! We are in our January thaw, daytime temperatures are above freezing. One hour we are negotiating through falling snow, large, heavy wet flakes, and the next hour, negotiating through puddles.

What I enjoy immensely in the winter are the woodland creeks and rivers. Catching glimpses of these as I drive, viewing the twists and turns bedecked with logs and rocks, thick ice laying over sections, and thick white snow laying on top of that. It is sculpture, it is proof that life continues even in the winter. The rivers continue to flow under and through the ice.

Which brings me to a question I've persued for some time.
When is a crick a creek?
When is a rivulet a stream? So many names for flowing water.
Is the proper term determined by the width or depth of the water body?
Is it determined by its' geographical location?
Is it determined by the altitude, or the pitch of the flow?
Or simply determined by history, and the cultures that initially lived along it?