The Pond

Where a storm's turmoil hideously yawned
I walked the shore of an ancient pond
High rocks surrounding moss-clad
With waves murmuring low and sad
Whispering as though the drowned all
Sighed plights in their rise and fall
Begging the gods for luscious air
From the depths of that liquid lair,
Strips of odd flesh and, here and there,
Heads of algae-ridden hair
Floating face-down in the fetid waves
Yet to sink eternal to their graves.
And 'neath the whimper of distant thunder claps
I felt my feet might perhaps
To that pond in desperation stray
So tantalizing the waters held me in their sway
Beneath the veil of storm-wrought skies
With a wretched glow to hypnotize.
And there crept over me
A dark sense of urgency
So that toward that hideous glow
My feet wandered labored and slow
As within that horrid light
The specter of a city plagued my sight
So that to towers decayed and tenanted
By the stench of the green, watery dead
I with open arms hungrily strode
To the ghost of that deep abode
To the sweet vision darkly spawned
By my new home--the rank abyss of that pond.