Earlier this Spring I was on a writing retreat with a friend in the East Bay Hills above Danville. The frogs were so loud they reminded me of peeper frogs in Massachusetts and Upstate New York. We were just back Upstate to visit friends who live in the solar eclipse path of totality. The frogs in swamps and damp spots were deafening, and started up in the dark of the eclipse. I hope you enjoy my poem. It is Spring!
Pacific Chorus Frogs
Male frogs in the early spring
are beating throat drums of desire
along the banks of this stream.
So loud and insistent
yet vibrations of our foot falls
wary them into temporary silence.
Females choose their mates, lay eggs,
and choose again and again
through each season for 3-4 years.
Extravagantly laying thousands
of tadpoles-to-be, never to know
them as grown froglets.
I have one child and I invest,
nay, gift, so much time and energy,
hope and dreams in her existence.
Maybe the better word is lavish.
I lavish life force on this girl.
And happy to do it.
She too could be eaten by a blue heron
or dry up in an ephemeral pond.
But I would choose, again and again
for this present.
Heather Saunders Estes 