Within Ripples

Every year from spring through fall, if you peered between the cattails you could see the swans in the center of the pond, head to head, their love peering back. On the pond's edges, from the tops of lily pads, frogs were singing of love's song as dragon flies frolicked gleefully above. We would sit and watch them countless hours, day after day as they gracefully swayed to the rhythm encircled in the reflections of love. One year in the dawning of spring, he returned alone, we watched him slowly swim with downcast head to the center of the pond, within the shadows of lost love he'd pause in the ripples that surrounded him, his sadness reaching the edges of the pond, where abandoned lily pads tilted downward caught in the spirals of his lonely tears. He still comes to the pond, muddied and alone from spring through fall, through clouded eyes we still watch him swim, wreathed within his pain we taste his loneliness. head downcast, he swims enclosed in the pond's ripples his tears splashing back October 12, 2019 Writing Challenge, October, 2019 -Bird- Sponsor, Dear Heart - Wiishkobi Ode