Picture Perfect Poem by S. R. Lavin

It is August. A time of still water.
The grasshoppers inhabit the tall grasses.
The trail takes us to the brook in the heat of the afternoon.
We cool ourselves in the pool below.

My twelve year old frolics in her love of life
the same way her mother loved life.

Picture perfect: edenic pond in lush shimmering heat.
In the distance a flock of great herons
fulfill their majestic purpose:
they wait in perfect quietude,
statuesque and royal.

The mountains are a backdropp to life’s drama.
The marshlands reflect a beauty that finite Man can see.
From a bent branch flits a flycatcher into the pond,
swooping up some morsel for his being.

If Time were a picture, captured in still-life,
this pond and all that surrounds it would be peace,
a meaning to all we have

and even what passes away would make sense to us.