a caesura of frogs
~Terry Dawson
(West Lake Hills, TX, 2005)
“so much depends upon
the red wheelbarrow
covered with rainwater
beside the white chickens”
- William Carlos Williams
I depend upon the brown-green wheelbarrow
full of a choir raising from the ground up a sound –
from puddles of marshy tussocks around the bend --
but more upon how they cease as one as they sense
my coming and their resumption after I pass
how do they manage to quiet themselves
in sync? with no cell phones
or passive infrared sensors, these
small mouths of spring:
cliff chirping and spotted chorus
frogs, announce their
harmonic consensus
as I go for my constitutional stroll
down the road from our home
alone, but never unnoticed;
I’m surrounded by tiny receptors
even when still – even then
they tell me I exist in space and
time -- that I swim through the unspoken
agreement of amphibians – of these mere thumbs of
serpentine and bronze, holding their song like a breath,
which means I am the breadth of a knot of frogs interrupted
I am a caesura in unison claimed; listen,
as I wave to life like a flag of silence.
See work previously published in the peace issue here.
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