The Pond

It has rained all day today. Feeling nolstagic, I donned my coat and grabbed my camera and went for a walk, half-heartedly wishing that my walk was taking place in another continent, in another place. The sky reminded me of winter days in La Tour-de-Peilz or Dundee. When I think of these places and all the moments of laughter I had there I find a bittersweet flavor in the core of my heart. Constantly we compare the moment of now in some sort of dissonance and look back to other times when we laugh as a matter of natural response, not a practiced effort. Still, I did find some kind of little joy in my steps today, listening to the rain drops pelting my hood even with earbuds in and listening to the moment's soundtrack from my iPod nano and feeling the swing and thump of my camera hanging around my neck and tucked in under my coat.

I managed to get a couple of photos without destroying my camera in the downpour...then when I came home, I found the poem.



The Pond

Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.

Lousie Glück