The winter of the frogs

Once more, we cluster on the lawn

all rubberleg and slapfoot.

Our squalling stops their sleep;

behind their walls, they think

they hear our wet eyes blinking.

I blink more loudly and more wetly,

surely, than all my fellows.

That is why they clamber on me,

kick me in my wide mouth

with limber legs, toe me

in my loudest wettest eyes.

I clamber too, kick and toe them,

bulb my chin with gulp

upon reedy gulp,

a cuíca in the Cornish night.

Even as we grapple, together

we sprawl in skeins

entwined as our spawn

on the near pond in springtime.

But what is springtime?

What is Cornish? What's a cuíca?

The unreality clangs at my smooth head.

Walls, lawn, winter–these words flop false;

what are words? I cannot speak

such human sortings, the knowings

their front-faced gaze

groups the year–the what??–into;

how they frame our ways within their own.

I am not of the world

of Brazilian percussion

but I am the instrument. See me:

a frog of mere fiction, a sullen seed

sown for some smug writer

to pluck and glut on glib creation.

Well? Have I satisfied?

Will you swing away that light?

Can I jostle among my brethren

again in our damp dark,

vying blankly for legacy

and blinking, squealing, kicking?