The Duck Pond.

This is a place of shadows and silence,
A place of dreaming;
A realm of perpetual twilight
Where time meets itself
And claims sanctuary
From the outside world.

Here I played the naturalist
Sitting beneath a Scots pine
Soaking up nature’s secrets,
Losing myself to the drone of insect voices,
And being hypnotised by the silent ripples
That gathered fragments of old sunlight
In their wake.

Once I was frightened by a host of slimy frogs
Who emerged from the primeval ooze of the pond
And crawled onto to land as if for the first time.
I ran back to my grandmother’s cottage
And slammed the bolt shut in its socket,
But I swear I heard Evolution scraping at the door.

One day I found strange hoof prints beside the pool
And a scattering of flower petals: Pan I believed,
Had frequented this wood,
Had piped ‘til dawn to an audience of owls,
Then like music stolen by the breeze,
Had faded back into the warmth of myth.

The still surface of the Duck Pond
Would often shimmer with an oily sheen,
Like the reflected iridescence of a starling;
The stillness often startled me to thought,
To dream in the shade of the green canopy
And trace the shafts of escaping sunlight to infinity,
To search the sleeping shadows for meaning.