Thursday evening was the first evening this season on which the pond did nothing. The light was long. The water was warm, or warmer at least than it had been since the frost cleared in early April. That date has not been pinned down here, but the older drakes place it, with the confidence of birds who have seen many frosts, at “roughly the second week, give or take.” The breeze came light from the south-west. It carried the smell of cut grass from beyond the boundary hedge, which is to say from the part of the world this gazette does not cover and, as a rule, does not acknowledge.
This paper took up a station on the south bank around the fifth honk and stayed a good while. In that time the following happened. A leaf came off the Old Willow and landed on the water and turned twice before drifting toward the southern waters. Two drakes of no clear affiliation crossed from the north bank to the south at a leisurely pace, plainly bound nowhere in particular. A single ripple of uncertain origin set out from the middle of the pond toward the west pier and gave out before it got there. That was the evening’s news.
The older drakes had been seated since well before the fifth honk and showed no sign of meaning to leave. Their conversation did not carry in full. Fragments reached the bank: “the season,” “as I recall,” and, at one point, with the finality of an old argument reaching its end, “well, that’s the thing, isn’t it.” The conversation went on. This paper let it.
The heron was at the west pier, in the position it took back on Tuesday. It had not moved. The dabchicks were ranged at the seaward end in what is now their standing formation. Neither party seemed to be minding the other. The fish were out of sight. The frog was out of sight. The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice turned up briefly at the gate and appeared to be writing in a notebook. The Warden did not turn up at all.
From the southern waters, around the sixth honk, a sound reached the bank best described, with caution, as a rehearsal. Two voices, one high and one low, the high one carrying further, ran a line of notes for about eight breaths and stopped. A pause. The line came again, longer, perhaps twelve breaths, and stopped again. No third attempt reached the bank, if one was made. The sound is set down without comment, except to say that the higher voice was, to this ear, in very good form.
The evening went on. The light moved over the water the way it moves when nobody is watching it for any reason. The leaf was gone by the time anyone thought to look for it. The older drakes had fallen quiet. The breeze had dropped.
No copy was filed Thursday evening. This one is filed Friday morning, from the memory of a pond that was, for one evening, only itself, with the willow over it and the light going down and nothing at all asking to be reported.