Looping my way along the trail,
The underboughs swimming in light,
Green growing on the creek wall,
I come upon the frog: fist-sized,
Nearly mineral, a clump of so much
Celsius and intelligence
As the earth requires. Amphibian,
I remember, the tadpoles suddenly
Veering into another life.
In ninth grade and the throes
Of our own transformations, we sat
Around the long, gouged-out table,
Making the sign of the cross
In the chests of frogs, peeling
Back their shirtwaists to reveal
The numinous splay of organs
Like a well-packed drawer. Breath
Was a kind of skin, we learned,
In which they were wrapped, and
How to make the dead limbs twitch,
And how they pissed away a fourth
Of their weight each day.
We lifted them from the dripping
Vats and ransacked their bodies,
Such knowledge being plunder
After all. In college, one biology
Professor had a frog he kept
In his icebox: a little dream
Of winter walling shut the world.
His “pet,” he’d boast to one group
Of students or another, bringing
It out like a cold cut, or some
Run-through for the resurrection,
As though it were only a joke
And not the totem he’d found
With which to imagine his life,
Alone and shut off there among us
In that dreary little town.
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