Papers, trash and leaves clogged the iron grate
When the first rain fell, it left a puddle. The grate drained some of the rain, but not all of it.
Then it rained and rained and rained, every day, for nearly three weeks. The clog increased its influence, and the puddle became a pond in the depths of the abandoned docking bay, where trucks once dropped their loads.
It rained so much, the water could not seep through the clog and there wasn’t enough sun to evaporate the accidental pond’s surface.
The water sat. Green algae specks bobbed through its depths.
The rain had stopped. Stubborn, the clog held. The algae grew into brilliant green masses, reaching from the bottom to the surface, fluttering lightly in still water.
Mosquitoes walked on the water. The growing algae tickled their feet.
The pond had become its own little world there in the docking bay, full of the stuff of life — beauty, serenity, aggression, survival.
Man’s litter had given the pond a fragile toehold on creation. Rain storms had given this accidental pond its moment in the sun. The passage of time was changing its character and composition.
New rains added depth and breadth to the pond.
The algae grew thicker, taking on a coloring richer than spring grass mowed after a steady sprinkle. Insects flitted, landing, leaving, hopping, skipping, on its surface.
In the depths, something stirred.
Small creatures swam through the watery algae maze of the accidental pond. Some life left behind by a visiting frog, or something that formed from primordial soup that had grown in the shadow of man’s modern accomplishments.
Then, one day, the accidental pond was gone.
Either man drained the pond on purpose or forces just as coincidental as its creation conspired to eliminate it.
Whatever the reason, the clog lost its influence.
The water was gone. The insects were gone. The swimming creatures, gone.
The algae left a lime-colored shadow etched on the concrete of the docking bay’s drive, similar to caveman drawings discovered on the stone walls of a mountain’s guts.
Green testimony that once there was an accidental pond.
Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.