The toads arrive near Easter, give or take
some days, their calendars calculated
by little jewels inside their skulls, I think,
or by colors that emanate from clouds,
by odors from the cesspool we call pond
out back, decaying leaves and neon
weeds, the gravel full of water bugs,
the bank’s conclaves of dandelions with their
sunny faces: noon always, until dispersal,
seeds in flight each hold potential clocks
within, each an elemental sundial,
each the air equivalent of one mosquito
larva wriggling with gusto in the lukewarm
water of the afternoon. So much potential.
The toads come every year, for now, and
rut among the muddy rotten things, for
days a couple clings together right where
the surface of the water meets the surface
of the air, clouds and light reflect
around them, trails of onyx eggs like beads
fashioned from glass, or plastic, beads that
each hold an inchoate toad but more likely
each is profligate, beads as if the dresses
of the 1920s have released their joyful
spangles, oh the normal is so endless, cruel,
oh the relentlessness of its renewal.

 

 

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Sarah B. Cahalan has poems currently out or forthcoming in Dappled Things, Winged Moon, and Psaltery & Lyre. Originally from Massachusetts, she is based in Dayton, Ohio.

 

 

 

Photo by Maddy Hunt on Unsplash