The Lonely Puddle

Among all the lakes and the creeks and the brooks
and the streams and the rivers that water the valley
there lived a small pond,
no more than a puddle.
Rushing around her the others would babble
and clatter the pebbles and stones
and they'd giggle,
while she remained silent
and sad
and alone.

Whenever the wind would arouse her to whisper
the others continued to pay no attention.
She'd stiffen her banks feeling angry and shy,
she'd clutch at her water,
but never would cry.

The brooks and the streams always babbled of things
they had seen on their journeys,
they couldn't keep secrets.
They spoke of white snow on the peaks of high mountains,
they spoke of a lake that was known as the sea,
with waters so wide that it welcomed all rivers...
Just lies, thought the puddle,
they're lying to me.

But oh how she listened and longed just to be
a small part of what gurgled and bubbled around her.
Why couldn't she be a brook or a stream
and glide over glistening pebbles and stones
instead of a puddle, apart and alone?

One day many clouds came and gathered above her,
conversing in deafening rumbling roars.
Gray, almost black, their darkness grew deeper.
The sky opened up and the rains tumbled down.
An ear-splitting crack sent a fear rippling through her,
a bright flash of light showed a brook right beside her.
No body of water had ever been closer.
Just for a moment he must have caressed her,
welling up feelings.
The rain kept on falling.
Splattering tears now she spilled out her fears:
"oh I'm trapped by my banks and I'll never be free.
I can't just let go. My water is me!
If my banks overflow I'll be lost.
I won't be."
The brook, very near, said "I know what you're saying.
I once used to think that my water was me,
and I held it inside me
and hunched my embankments,
like you, to be safe, so I never was free.
Listen!
The rain...
Each drop may be separate, but taken together:
one sound, like the sea.
The rain and the rivers,
all waves and all ripples,
are fashioned of water just like you and me."

Now the sounds he was speaking became the rain pouring,
the brook and the weather, the sky, even she,
seemed now to be singing one song all together.
The haze and the roar of the rain -
was she dreaming?

No longer aware of her widening waters,
no longer aware of her banks or her borders,
now looser and lighter
she noticed a streaming.
All glistening and gleaming
her water was leaving.
But as she allowed all her liquid to leave her
new waters flowed in her
and swelled her
and filled her.
She stretched and grew longer
and longer
and longer,
unwinding herself in the mud and the bubbles,
aware that the roaring she heard was her laughter.
Flowing, now gushing,
now hugging the hillside,
she roared over rocks, now embracing the valley,
past tree stumps and tree roots
and over great boulders,
till crashing and foaming she came to the sea.

Now she knew that the dew
and the rain and the rivers,
the lakes and the clouds and that shimmering sea
were all the same water.
Pounding and roaring
or silently soaring,
or rippling or gurgling,
or murmering or pouring...
All the same water.

In time the sun beamed on the mountains and streams
turning lakes into mirrors,
and rivers to ribbons of silver,
and setting the billions of dewdrops agleam.

And just when it seemed that it all was a dream...
She heard a small voice -
was it some other puddle? -
A voice so familiar
which asked in a whisper:
"Why couldn't I be a river like you?
At least a small stream,
just a stream for a start.
Not just a puddle alone and apart."

The Lonely Puddle

New Poems

From By Heart

Some Earlier Poems

Audio Recordings