The pond is calm today.
Its surface a glassy mirror
for the bright blue of the summer morning.
Leaves of water bistort dot the surface:
lie lows for the adventurous ladybirds
voyaging to the foreign land
beneath the shade of the bay tree.
Lime green duckweed tries to clump
where the sun bakes the water
but the water snails love to graze
in the slack heat while
the frogs doze in the silent depths
with the detritus of last year's blooms.
A newt turns beneath a leaf
and is gone, its yellow belly
echoing the golden dandelions
at the pond's rim as a soft breeze
ripples the water's face just enough
to disturb the pond skaters
and I look up to see
the pin prick of a skylark
in the brazen sky.

---

Author’s note: Our garden pond is small and yet it seems to attract frogs, newts, dragonflies, damselflies plus a host of other insects. It is also my sanctuary from the world’s madness where I can breathe and slip into the wild. On a warm calm day, such as the one in the poem, it reminds me that we are only one small cog in a vast array of beautiful wheels.

Glenis Moore is a relatively new writer working in the flat lands of the Fens near Cambridge, UK. When she is not writing she makes beaded jewellery, knits, reads and runs 10K races slowly. She has been previously published by Dust Poetry, The Galway Review, Infinity Wanderers and Cosmic Daffodil.