The Pond Gulls

The town pond was drained, revealing minnows wriggling in the residual water they milled and turned in silvered arabesques choregraphed by a rippling wind. Large ocean-going gulls descended out of a troubled sky, they walked among the writhing small fry plucked out the little fish employing just the tip of their great beaks as if sensible of the delicacy of such morsels. Dark clouds foretold a storm, strange but the gulls did not fly off to feast on Lake Erie’s plentiful bounty, they lingered here on this little pond like diners at a buffet skewering only these bitsy sprats, while squalls fermented the Great Lakes and much bigger fish flew unmolested through those high cresting waves. Little ponds it seems, do not at all mirror the courage of the free.