This vernal pool is all that still remains
of what was once a bank of snow piled deep,
but has been settled now by warmth and rains,
a season laid down to its final sleep.
Its only ornaments are tiny frogs
that soon will leave, and leaves along its floor.
It’s nothing grand among the forest bogs;
it’s not a pond: a puddle, and no more.
It won’t amount to much, as people think;
it won’t join in the river to the sea,
but sink among the roots where birches drink:
a humble life without a legacy—
and yet it won’t be gone, though now unseen:
no, look above, into the burgeoning green.
___________________
Weather Report
Vanishing,
as today’s ice becomes
a brook, which
becomes the sea,
which returns as snow,
clearing overnight.
Expect all in higher elevations
to fall, but growth to continue
well into the next eon.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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