“SILENT POND”
By
Bill Olson
The script of my two time award winning video.
© 1986 Bill Olson
Desolate pond of unmoving waters clothed in algae. You sit out there beneath the singing birds apparently dead. No one drinks of you, no one swims within. You never splash or ripple. I think perhaps you're waiting: perhaps for a gust of wind, a ray of sun -- anything to make a difference, to bring an air of life.
Desolate pond, you hold such secrets, secrets held for many years before my birth. You've been a pond or lake or puddle since the first explorers, ages ago: I've seen the maps, cracked and yellow. I've seen you there, so I know. You've seen and heard such histories, such heroes who could venture from beyond the once impassable mountains, who could walk this shore and notice you, and draw you so we'd know you were here.
But they never named you. Or if they did, perhaps it was a whisper over the crackle of a nighttime campfire. You -- and only you -- could hear it. And so your name became another secret, and perhaps the most frightening: For it holds you locked, imprisoned as it were, in anonymity. And as a pond, you're muted by God from telling your name, from revealing your secrets.
Your silent waters may not speak words, but are a mirror echoing the glorious skies.
There you are, apparently dead. But I know better: Those algae are life, and are themselves the womb of other tiny species.
Still, you want movement, don't you? You want a ripple and a splash. You want a name.
Very well, then, I hereby offer a stone to move your flesh....
The splash is like laughter, the ripples like a smile, and to them I now whisper your name, which I shall whisper whenever I visit:
Silent Pond. What else could it be? Silent Pond.
-- Eau Claire, Wisconsin
June 3, 1986