Ree-Deep

Ree-deep.

A ripple of water.

Ree-deep.

A sniffle of wind that pushes the shore grass, emulating the waves from the ocean crashing on the beach.

Ree-deep.

It is cool here. And dark. And quiet. The concrete soaks up the cool of the evening. There are lights nearby that attract bugs who fly in and out of its beam like ballerinas. Occasionally they fly low over the pond, a feast for the frogs.

Ree-deep.

It is hard to write the sound of frogs, because the sound of frogs overlaps and echoes and bounces off the water. They are rarely in sync, but always in chorus.

Some hide in the grass on the shore of the pond beneath the structure of concrete and metal. Others squat in the mud where the shore lies bare. Others still, drawn by the mass of bugs circling the lights above, crawl up the concrete bowl that hangs over their pond to sit on the edge of the light, feasting, feasting.

Ree-deep.

The rocket is there, above.

The frogs don’t know what it is. They do know since it came there are more lights, and more bugs, and more feasting.

There is more noise tonight. More activity. But the frogs don’t mind. The humans may walk on the concrete or the metal above the bowl, but they do not come down to the pond. Frightened frogs can easily leap from their perches on the concrete by the light and bugs into the cool, deep water below, with the splash being the only thing the human hears, the only thing they see.

Ree-deep.

A rumble and a flash and a blast of air which dimples the surface of the pond. Then fire and smoke  which snatches air from the bowl and lungs and vaporizes the bugs and dims the lights and blasts the hapless from the edges of the bowl into the air, tumbling, tumbling.

Perhaps he closed his eyes as he flew and felt with his limbs as the air passed for some handhold, some foothold. Perhaps he remained alive. We do not know.

But the next night, after the quiet that followed the blast and the departure of the thing above, the frogs and the bugs returned.

Ree-deep.

Ree-deep.