10.23.17

The house lay up a
winding path lined with
redwood and pine trees
that opened out into a clearing.
This was in the spring,
when frogs ventured out from
the creek and made bizarro
harmonies outside our windows
at night. In the evenings
I’d spy their colonies down by the creek.
And sometimes a stray shaft of light
would spray through the thick canopy
of leaves and land directly on one of these
amphibians and I’d see its goopy eyes close
bottom-up as it absorbed the sunlight.
Astounding. Proof
in a single frame of life that all
of this was designed with some greater purpose,
for how else would an animal composed of slime
and cartilage, whose purpose was to tongue insects midflight,
share with a creature as complex and broken
as me the warm kiss of sunshine?
Or perhaps the frog was cold. This possibility
was not lost on me.

Written at 10:06 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.