When the Music Died

The Music Died

The pond, once alive

with geese and ducks and frog song,

shrouded in silence.

When we first moved into our neighborhood ours was one of the first homes on our street.  The geese would traipse from the retention pond at the back of our home through our yard, then cross the street to the other newly built homes. No doubt this was their territory for a while.

Several families of ducks had made their homes on the farther bank of the pond, and we would often see them swimming leisurely across it, parents leading ducklings all in a row. Occasionally a heron would visit, posing as a statue until suddenly it would swoop and rise again with dinner in its mouth. My favorite pond residents, however, were the frogs.

I never saw the frogs but at dusk, in late spring into summer, the singing would begin. The higher pitched chirping and gurgling would be punctuated by the deep bellowing of bullfrogs, the banjo like sounds of green frogs, and a splash or two. I looked forward to the symphony nature provided each evening, conducted by an unseen hand.

During the first two summers the chorus was so loud that we could barely hear the television, even with the windows closed. Then the volume of the concerts began to diminish as more houses were built and more lawns were treated to grow lush and green.

After a while I only heard the bullfrog, bellowing its lonely solo in the absence of the rest of the orchestra.

Then one summer, the music died.