from amongst the cattails

beneath the shade of beech trees
where the tiny stream pooled in moss, peat and granite
a few yards from the lake -- she laid her eggs

splashed merrily in the finest ignorance
enlightened only by instinct, shade, sunshine
and clean clear mountain spring water

what monstrous fool would not want to be a frog?
water sliding lubricous along green glistening skin
with each glorious push of leg against cool swamp

for thirty years, where the pussy willows lilted in sunlight
the winds played the bulrushes in a chorus of saxophone
and a samba of bogged out castanets

he watched the regal metamorphosis of the un-kissed
clear jelly egg to speeding secretive tadpole,
raucous biped tadpole to four-legged (but not forewarned) froglet

then,
with all the calamity of life and summer living and croaking
a small new frog by the thick brown mud
preying on mosquitoes and unafraid.