in a small pond
Joelle Jameson
We forget the pond in winter,
dense with brown leaves
decorating its dark edges, floating
moss and algae like pillows for
sleeping single-celled creatures
and flower carcasses in green
water of surprising depth. Optimism
dissipates the way summer
sun leaves skin red and fireflies
abandon trees for a child’s
sticky hands, to burn and circle
till they sink into a small pond
so deep, it might as well be an ocean.
But an ocean would not keep
quiet for a frog’s croak, or sink
into a stagnant state of reticence,
or rest long enough to generate
a reflection of trees turning red
in the falling sun as summer turns
itself inside out and birds take off,
forgetting the small things growing
at a snail’s pace — single-celled ideas
and developing bodies in the algae
murky at the stone bottom, stray sun
making lanterns of dead leaves
like fireflies born of winter.
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