Time to Reflect

Time to Reflect (see in Gallery / Store) | Image by Bruce Harris

I’ve walked these preserves many times, right past this pond with its bramble shoreline hidden in the trees. To find its edge is to spread a web of buckthorn and maple saplings, straddle over fallen limbs, perhaps balance on another and be stunned I hadn’t seen it before. I muddled through the veiny, thin spaces grateful for the glimpse. All was green in the summer water except for the blue middle - the sky - and two blue herons in the wavering mirror, gawking as they flew around the bend.

I went back again that October and for a moment the world was still. Still as a photo and empty as a frame. What a perfect spot, I thought, and came back the next summer to find the shoreline being opened by machines, the brush cleared, preserve workers industrious and organized, the pond hiker-ready, the birds gone.