The Pool

In the heart of a large, sparse wood, under the shadow of a boulder, a pool about the size of a hug lay calmly reflecting the green leaves above it and sometimes sparkling in the sun which shimmered through the leaves. In springtime, forest animals would come to drink its cool, fresh water. Rabbits would wriggle their noses and ripples would jump across the pool and bounce back. Ants trooped by its edge and spiders skimmed its surface. A doe led her fawn there for its first drink.

In the winter the pool was so still its surface froze.

Then no animals came, and the pool was lonely. “They come only to drink my water and care nothing at all for me,” it thought to itself. The wind blew spotty brown leaves over the ice that had frozen on top of the pool; dry twigs fell there and stayed. If by chance a rabbit hopped nearby, it jumped carelessly over the pool, not even knowing it was there.

A great longing always arose in the heart of the pool during such winters. A longing for springtime and summer. But springtime did always come at last and so did the ants and spiders, the doe and little birds.

And the animals not only drank from the pool, but also talked with it (except for the birds, whose language it couldn’t understand). All became friends again.

One particularly good and fine summer seemed to last so long that everyone had pretty much decided that there would be no winter anymore, but then a chill breeze began to blow from the north. Autumn was here again. Chipmunks were stuffing their mouths with the acorns the trees were dropping for them. A brown leaf fell, fluttered, and landed on the pool. It floated there a while before it sank. Squirrels were climbing the trees frantically, snatching the acorns selfishly before the trees dropped them to the chipmunks.

“Why are you carrying on so?” asked the pool to the squirrels.

“Because we’re gathering food, and you’d better do the same,” an old squirrel said. The squirrel didn’t know that a spring fed the pool from underneath all year round, summer or winter. “I never see you here during the winter,” the squirrel said. “And no doubt it’s caused by malnutrition.”

He liked long words, especially if he didn’t understand them, and pronounced them very quickly, so that if you didn’t know the word very well it sounded as though he were only chattering. “Malnutrition,” the squirrel said again.

“And I never see you during the winter either,” the pool accused the squirrel. “Why am I left here so alone?”

“We have other places we are needed,” the squirrel said haughtily. “We come and go as we please. But you just sit here like a lazy snail.

“I’ve been out in the world,” the squirrel continued.

“There’s a place where grass grows tall and turns yellow; that’s the meadow. And there are piles of dirt much taller than any tree in these woods and they’re called mountains. And there are strange animals which none of us can understand who build holes above the ground to live in. And I’ve even been to the sky, and discussed many important things with the sun.”

The squirrel would have gone on, but stopped here so that he could snatch a nut that was about to fall. He put the nut in his mouth and continued talking, but no one could hear what he said.

But the things the pool had heard the squirrel say filled it with a new longing, a longing to escape the woods and see the world, and never be lonely again.

When night settled down to sleep that day, the pool lay awake, its silver eye still wide and wondering. Finally though, it fell asleep. The night animals crept quietly to steal water from the pool. An owl hooted from one of the trees, knocking an acorn into the pool with a splatter. Then the night animals went back to sleep again.

Suddenly, the pool awoke. Dawn was breaking. There was not enough light to see. But the earth was shaking. The pool felt as if its soul were being torn from the ground. The earth split open, and the boulder which stood above the pool fell into it. Dirt caved in from all sides, and mud spread throughout the water.

“What’s happening?” cried the pool. But no one answered it, for the squirrels, and deer, and rabbits were all scampering, running, or hopping away as fast as they could. A snake slithered past. The ground still shook. A rumble like a sound that might come from a gigantic throat gurgled up from the earth. A tree crashed across the pool.

The pool was indeed alone now, and could scarcely contain itself for fear. Suddenly, a trickle began pouring from the pool in a small stream. The stream grew, and continued to grow and run even after the earth’s groan had echoed away.

The stream ran this way and that through the woods, around hills and through gullies. And as it went it picked up dirt, and leaves, twigs, and other dead things and carried them along with it. “What have I done?” asked the pool to itself. “Why was I not content? Even the faint joy that was mine has been removed from me now.” It was free from the woods, but with a horrible price. Now nothing would visit it for no animal would want to drink such dirty water.

The pool was horrified as it churned along, and found that it was no longer a pool only, but that it was now also a creek that flowed out from a pool. Dead bugs that had been buried in the dirt, the swirls of the stream uncovered and carried along with it on its surface as if displaying medals. And no matter how hard the little stream tried to put them away from itself, it could not. It tried to swirl around a corner and toss the bugs onto a bank, but instead, an old rat who was sitting nearby coughed in surprise, then died in terror and fell into the creek, turning over and over.

The creek flowed on. It went past the woods and past the meadow. A gardener saw it coming and said to his wife, “Look, our crops are saved!” And before the stream could think, the man had turned it into his garden. The stream came out of the garden brown and muddy. But still it flowed on.

“Will this never end?” the stream asked itself. There was a city in the distance. The stream flew faster and faster toward it. Just before it entered the city though, it veered to the right, for the city was on a hill and so instead of going straight through it, the stream flowed through the outskirts. As it went, people threw paper into it and spat into it, and built pipes to it to carry away the dirty water from their houses.

But this was not the only city. The little stream passed through six cities altogether before it flowed into the sea.

But before it got to the sea, it flowed into a large field. On the field, many men, so that it seemed all humanity, were having a war. The men were dying, bleeding, and crying out. They held their wounds if they were alive, but could not keep their blood from flowing out, and into the little creek. Many soldiers came to drink its water, never noticing that it was dirty. But one boy, as he dipped his head in for a drink, died, and left his head hanging in the water.

After that, the creek flowed on into a desolate, barren, rocky place. It saw no more people in this forsaken region. Finally it found the sea.

The sea was so large it didn’t seem to notice that a new little stream had come into the world, but continued its relentless law of wave upon wave as it had from eternity. How lonely the little stream now was, for though it now passed by so many more with whom it could be friends, the knowledge of its dirty water kept it from making friends. How horrid was its life. For the harder it tried to act, the more it swirled and frothed in its attempt to escape the dirt, the dirtier it got.

Years passed, perhaps a century or two. The little stream’s course had changed slightly, and somehow managed to flow away from the farmers, away from the cities, away from the warriors. It flowed now in little wooded parts of the country, occasionally venturing out into a bright and sunny meadow. And, its youth somewhat spent, it did not swirl and splash and struggle so much against the bonds of gravity and life.

And because it was older, its youthful passion to rush and froth did not stir so much dirt as it had before. The stream was a cleaner stream.

Still, it was sad.

Once, a young man, who had been wandering aimlessly through the woods stopped when he came to the stream and lay on his back beside it. A capricious and beautiful girl had flown away with his heart and would not give it back to him. (Though, perhaps, she never knew she had it.) He suddenly sat upright and listened to the stream. “Why, this little creek knows the sad song my heart tries to sing to me but cannot!” he exclaimed. So he sat by the stream a long time until he knew the song by heart. His heart came back to him slowly as he thought of that song, filling the emptiness that had been in his chest and making him laugh. Next time, he thought, he would give his heart away.

But as for the stream, there was nothing sadder, so nothing there was to cheer it. Sometimes little animals came to the pool that sat over the spring, but the little things that made them happy seemed to the stream frivolous. Knowledge had taken away its joy, and it knew that the animals played in innocence. It could not laugh with the squirrels when the old oak (whose trunk had been split in the earthquake) dropped an acorn on a chipmunk’s head. Nor with the chipmunks when a squirrel fell from a limber twig which a chipmunk could have easily crossed.

It could not share in a mother rabbit’s joy of her little bunnies. It had seen other little bunnies and other mothers fall at the sound of the hunter’s rifle, and the dogs barking gleefully over their bodies.

Animal friends it made grew old, and died. The stream was left alone again and again.

But a change came to the stream. It saw the sea in a new light. The waves that had seemed so harsh before, now seemed to be the ceaseless echo of a call made long ago by something lonely, something lonelier yet than the stream. The stream thought about this, wondering.

One day, without warning, the spring beneath the pool stopped gurgling. The little stream stopped flowing. The hot sun shone. The little pool began to shrink. It dried up until there was nothing left but a muddy depression. And then the mud dried into cakes, and cracked.

A little bird, after a long, tiring flight, darted down, and hopped about the spot of dried mud. “Where is the little pool that I used to drink from?” asked the sparrow. A cloud covered the sun. It began to rain. The drops fell, ruffling the little bird’s feathers.

“I am in the rain, little bird,” the pool answered the sparrow. “I am in the cloud; I am in the sky; I come from the sea, which loves me. I water the whole earth.”

But if the little bird heard and understood, it gave no sign of it. It hopped about a bit more, then flew to a tree to find shelter.

The End