Ripples
You toss a stone into the pond,
watch ripples spread
in perfect arcs
across the tree,
reflected branches arching outward,
if upside down,The pattern of its growing
seems to change in rippling,
though perhaps the changes are
in your looking only.
What you think important now
was once submerged,
unacknowledged,
until it rippled out a new idea
to stir the gleaming surface of your mind.
So how you see
depends upon the stone you throw,
and where it sends your ripples
across what lies reflected
in the pond.Perhaps the tree,
though upside down,
shows truer,
and more real,
when new ideas
trace a pattern on
its silvery reflection.We'll never know-
though trees and ponds
and silver mirrors
sometimes reveal
a shadowed truth too deep
to see in noonday sun.C Lenore Horowitz, 2001
