Sunday, September 3, 2017: at the old pool in the woods of Finca Buenvino, Spain

Ambling along the wooded path, morning sun dapples.

Gentle veer to the left and a slight decline reveals an old, maybe even ancient, archway.

A threshold into invited imagination.

Broken amphora and tree limbs.

The small square abandoned pool, its once white marble stones now stained from cork and chestnut leaves long dead and decayed.  Its once crystal waters, now dark and stagnant.

What story evoked, mystery imagined here?

She pushes the lattice gate, patina green with age, and enters a space out of time, out of place.  Another era.  Another life.

Walls made of stone and stucco.  Moss fans like sea coral across the surface.

A pool.  Square.  Its surface thick with algae.

Amphora cracked and gaping like a heart that never healed.

She remembers.

A little boy lost.

Following his dog, together running, leaping, caught in a moment of sunshine, lost in the reverie of play.

His mother calls, calls, calls. No reply.

Hot, tired and bitten by honey bees, he follows his dog who, smelling the fresh spring water and overcome by instinct, leaps into the pool below. 

Making his way down the slope, now at the pool’s edge, he wavers.  So hot.  So thirsty.  Overcomes the caution of his mother’s warning.

Splashes. Flounders. Grabs hold of the dog who wiggles out and away.

Kneeling by the edge she peers into the dank and murky depths, mesmerized by memory.

Searching.  Finding.

Lost.  Found.