Now there’s a mix! You don’t often get dying frogs in the same breath as a high window, but that’s the case with my poem, “Night of the Dying Frogs,” appearing in the U.K. e-zine The High Window this week.
This poem, like many I write, is based on a rather unreal real-life experience. One day when both the rain and I were driving, I came across a stretch of road that was bubbling in more ways than one. I soon managed to figure out what the problem was–the macadam was alive not only with puddles boiling with rainfall but with frogs jumping for their lives (and no, I don’t live in Calaveras County).
They were all over the place, heavy yet lively, bull frogs leaping con brio, all headed in the same direction. As no one was behind me, I braked, hoping to swerve my way through them, but their numbers seemed legion, and I’m not sure my tires managed the gauntlet, tread as they might.
Frogs or no frogs, that morning made for a difficult drive to work. Darkness. Sheets of rain. Standing water on the roads. Low visibility. In short, drivers were knee-deep in trouble. But hey, I made it, and the polliwog of an idea was born. One tail less and four legs later, the poem from that unusual episode was born.
“Night of the Dying Frogs” will appear in my new book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, coming soon to an amphibious bookstore near you. Many thanks to David Cooke and Anthony Costello for making it a part of their journal.
