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a walk at dusk down the trail
and through the field... discovers a multitude of tiny brown
toads at various intervals... all trying to cross the path. so...
why did the toads cross the road?
i just don't know. it's their
world... they can go as - and where - they please. like little
lumps of mobile trash... clumps of mud and grass that suddenly
hop forward... they seem to be smudges on the white stone path...
until yr right on top of them. for a moment i wondered what it
might be like to squish them under the waffles of my soles...
there i go trailing toad guts all over the rugs... again. but,
in fact, i watched my step. live and let live, little fellas...
what if they were sophomores...?
i'd still watch my step... because sophomores are precious to
me... smarter than we think and adventurous enough... but...
uncautious in traffic...
or what if sophomores were they...?
i'd still respect their lumpy brown selves as they hopped onto
the next poem or across the thin blue lines of looseleaf... chasing
that quick gray bug of a thought and burping it out in a word
like... "usurped"...
(i bet none of the amlit-h crowd
will write "usurped" this weekend as they compose their
own personal declarations of independence...well,
maybe a few will...)
there might be a toad or two
in eliot carter's third string quartet... somewhere down in the
bass... but it's mostly grasshoppers and sparrows and thin brown
weedstalks.
i've never seen a toad die moment
by moment as a robin died this morning...yes, one more. i heard
the bird-window collision, a solid hit. dying... in the grass
down there, belly-up on its back, legs upthrust, fallen angel
wings, tiny anus on one end opening and closing... thin beak
on the other... opening and closing for maybe a minute... sad
gasp... body's last thought... until it all stops. dead. a little
life done.
where are philip larkin's toads
when you need them? he wrote something about the toad Work squatting
on his life... but, when i looked to my shelves for the book
with the exact words, it was gone... dark forest green collected
poems of... gone. hiding or... maybe it hopped over to my classroom
last season and never hopped back... but... here it is in my
Dictionary of Quotations:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
never paid much attention to
that other literary toad, he of Toad Hall from Wind in the Willows...
that book was kind of scarey... don't you think?
come to think of it, the toads
on the road seemed sort of untoady... lean enough to make their
moves, tough little legs, powerful hearts, enough desire... not
the big fat wart-giving fly-smacking lumps of legend.
transcendental thought for the
day: maybe we've each already got whatever we need to get to
the other... or...
why did the brother cross the
road?
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