Daily Prompt: The frozen pond

The pond that once held frogs and water boatmen

Swimming intermittently between the fronds of weed

Allowed dragonflies to dip; hawk-like hunters across the surface

And was the habitat for newts, their long-tails trailing as they swam,

Is now frigid; solid with ice that doesn’t even crack

Beneath the force of a snowball.

Nothing splashes in the deep, dark depths

No heron stands at the edge statuesque and still

Seeking the slightest movement to spear with its beak.

Instead there is a still, glassiness reflecting the blue winter sky

The deer cannot drink; and the ducks can only skate across the surface

For the sub-zero, arctic winds have brought the beast from the east

And we must abide the glacial freeze as bleak winter bites.

Photo and poem copyright Englepip©

via Daily Prompt: Frigid

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Peculiar

Photos by Englepip ©

Peculiar – that’s what it is

When wetness falls out of the heavens

to touch the trees and the mountaintops,

making pools on the ground ….

but such is rain.

Strange when the ocean recedes

And the rocks are exposed for hours

Before it returns to the same place to start over ….

As the tides come and go.

Odd when the leaves fall off the trees

and the branches wave like witches’ fingers in the cold

when temperatures plummet ……

in the Fall.

Unfamiliar when the land is covered in snow

And it drifts in folds across the landscape

Making everything clean and white and blanketed ……

in winter.

Uncanny when the wind screeches wildly

Whipping up the water into huge waves

Demolishing our world ……..

in a hurricane.

Bizarre when standing on dry land

leads to slipping and sliding as though on glass

And nothing is stable enough to be walked on ……..

without falling on the ice.

Peculiar, that the most natural things in the world

Our weather, seasons and tides can be so strange.

Peculiar