The pump lets out a diesel roar
An industrial lion, trumpet of civilization’s return
The surface shudders as sublayers are drawn
and spilled on a distant patch of grass scrub.

Frogs squirm, algae drifts, turtles surface nervously
as 3 years of pollen, leaves, and life is exiled from the bottom up.
Somewhere below a mechanical Carybdis strikes fight or flight fear
into the tiny world of muck and water, dirt and larvae.

Power washers fire up, unleashing tight spiral sprays
Eager puppies joining their voices to the great howl of the pump.
Inch by inch they wash away the years of neglect:
Algae green turns to scale white turns to unreal blue.

Thousands of gallons make a one-day-only stream
As a bottom unseen since diaper-days turned to preschool
Becomes visible once more, with four turtles, countless leaves,
and a lonely, long-forgotten, torpedo-toy resolving; images from wet static.

A few hours (thousands of gallons), and the pump goes silent.
The power washers hiss at the exposed floor, loosening scale;
It flows deep, clean and bright as beach sand on a fast current.
A shop vac captures the last of it, along with pollywog holdouts.

A pair of hoses refill the artificial pond, no longer a habitat,
As we drive with a carload of shelled refugees.
One by one, my children set down the four pool turtles
And wave as they vanish into the reassuring muck.