Frogs, a sort of mascot for my brother
whose friends called him Hoppy.
One of his tree ornaments,
a frog wearing a Santa hat,
hangs on our tree every Christmas,
near the back.
Flat fields of his youth provided
nowhere to hide, the sky was too close;
so he left muddy rivers, farm ponds
and sloughs to become a frog out of water,
exotic desert amphibian, trying to drown
Vietnam nightly
at the Green Onion Bar.
He knew frogs, we both did,
from fishing trips with our uncle up north.
After dark, we’d go down to a swamp
and grab them with bare hands,
slam them into a gunnysack to be
pike bait next morning.
We got to be good at it.
Once, during frog mating season,
we suffered frog croaks all night long.
What little sleep we managed was full
dreaming—frog as changeling,
that metamorphosis trick they do, tadpoles
becoming something they’re not, frogs
turning into princes the way young men
turn into soldiers overnight.
Making a joke of it, he liked to say
one day he’d been a goof-off student
at Eureka College, next
he’d found himself in a jungle full of Vietcong
quivering so much it was hard
to hold on to his weapon.
Brother, if only we had known
the language of frogs, then maybe
you wouldn’t have died alone
and too young. Maybe there was salvation
in those raucous croaks—
second chances, bountiful mercies,
metamorphosis for lost souls.
August 12, 2013