Grandpa Pond

A grey cloud drifts slowly overhead.  It settles into a comfortable position.  The pond becomes quiet.

The pond is still and sad and dark: an old man’s eyes as he is lost in silent reverie.

Underneath, even the fish lay dreaming in the depths.

A crane calls eerily overhead, again, again, and its ghost flock answers, hidden in echoey woods.

A slight breeze causes old man to blink, but he does not return from memory.

Lightly, a leaf falls here and a leaf falls there, brushing his cheek.

Old man is remembering his wild and wandering youth, before middle age came with accountability and things to keep.  Middle age passed quickly enough while he felt strong and righteous in his responsibilities.  But, with time, middle age moved out and old age crept in, and all those responsibilities and ownerships and caretakings left to live in other places.  Now, old man is tied down by his surroundings.  A home he couldn’t leave.  A season by season, year by year loneliness.  A dam.  Subdued into slowness and stillness, old man’s spirit lives less and less in the present, and returns often to recollection.

He longs for his youth as an unfettered stream.  He played with the freewheeling salmon, jumped rocks, walked fallen logs, traveled from the mountains to the sea, made his way to the valley, where he met his only love and they formed the river.

A raindrop falls like a teardrop on old man’s face as he recalls his lover and their valley rendezvous. 

Another raindrop falls, accenting the loneliness.

The air is cooling.

A heavier breeze, and old man shivers back to reality, ripples picking up across his skin.

The rain starts to dive from the heights in earnest, pulling wet leaves off the trees, which groan, bullied by the growing wind. 

Old man’s eyes are wide now, and he hunkers down to face another in a lifetime of autumn storms.

He secretly smiles to the memory of his love; a thousand times they danced through the rain and ran the river together.  A thousand times the clouds crushed down and the two streams sprung back, hand in hand!

The rain is flying down now!  Thick as a thousand memories, and old man is finding himself in two worlds: the feelings of the past seem to overtake his mind, but in the present, he feels strong and deep and more alive than he has in years. 

Even the dream-deluded fish are shocked awake by the influx of cold rain-water. 

The pond rises, rises, rises...

A wooden creak that is not from the trees cuts over the din of the storm—a longer groan—and crash!  

Water spills over the broken dam!

Fish run amok!

Trees and cranes and clouds cheer and shout and wave a thunderous joyous goodbye!

Old man leaves for the last time, young at heart, venturing out through the old creek way. 

In an instant, memories are the moment, and the moment is anything possible.  Old man remembers a story of somebody seeing a long tunnel with a light at the end.  He sees a dancing adventure of a creek bed with love at the end.

He is young again.  Moving again.  Strong again.  Loving again.  Alive again.