Click on the Play Button to hear a reading of my poem “Bull the Frog,” one of 81 poems in my new book, The Logic of Rhyme, now Live on Amazon.
Bull the Frog
At sunrise Bull the Frog always awoke
To bellow a booming and beautiful croak.
The sound would such pleasure evoke
That he would croak and croak and croak.
On summer days he would splash and soak
In the cool dappled shade of a water oak;
He could sidestroke, backstroke, breaststroke,
But his masterstroke was the butterfly stroke.
He would stretch out long legs to float,
Dine on insects, one by one, and gloat,
With eyes so creamy
And a look so dreamy
That he might have been high on coke,
And then belch a postprandial croak.
He was, among croakers, a pedagogue,
And young frogs came and sat on a log,
And closely attended to his daily blog
On how to croak in beauty like a frog.
With skin so green and wet with sheen
And a bellow so melodious and mellow,
The lady frogs were frisky and keen
To frolic with such a handsome fellow.
When embraced in his slippery grasp
They would slither, croak and gasp,
And then leap in jubilation and joy,
And somersault for their bully boy.
His one angst was to be inspected
And, heaven forbid, maybe dissected,
Under a microscope, even baroque,
And by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
This so undid him, that he, sinking down,
Croaked the last croak he ever croaked,
And sank down, down and deeper down,
Blew out a bubble of air and . . . croaked.
Another jeu d’esprit
by yours truly, HyC