Water Laughing

If I listen carefully, I can hear the water laughing. After a hard rainfall I will sometimes go to the front yard just across a narrow street from a little creek -- it makes a happy, lively sound like many voices, and in the background of that, sometimes there is laughter. I often wonder what this stream was like before the city was built around it:

A stream flows gently near my door
I sometimes hear its water laughing
Flowing over rock and root
to water summer's greenwood leafing
Who walked this earth before my kind?
I asked the stream, awake, yet dreaming...
Many creatures young and old
The stars, the fish, the sunlight beaming
And those who walked upon two legs
yet never fouled my sparkling waters
They knew, you see, I was their life
to me belonged their sons and daughters...