Looking Glass
A winter of drought, and the first winter of ice in the pond.
The water flows, what there is of it; in this warmth, there is precious little ice to dam it now.
Every day I give thanks for this one small grace. It is my refuge within a refuge, the home of my spirit, a looking glass with magical properties that allow me to transcend space and time and distance, to go to a place from long ago that I was allowed to see but not to touch.
I am home now, but the ice in the pond, the grue, the pooling water, they all take me home again, home to a place I will see nevermore in life. I cannot travel there now, but even if I could, it isn’t there. It has been razed, dug up and plowed under and turned over and built upon, a small plot of shady green land with a tiny pond guarded by a single weeping willow. They were all somehow less important than someone’s dollars.
A few dollars more to make a family farm into a factory farm.
No time, no space for willow trees, or green grass, or silvered waters no matter how small. The willow cannot be allowed to weep when there are dollars to be had.
But here, they cannot touch it, any of it, not the grass or the willow or the pond or the ice.
Or me.
And from home, I can go home again, through the looking glass.
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