the peering frog

the peering frog leers

at a swarm of flying things

i cannot tell

what they are - other than the swirling vortex

threatening to swallow whole

the thing that once was predator

now prey, once and for all.

the peering frog exhales

a dry and humid cough

what beauty is there met

in the smokescreen darkness wrought?

this peering frog tells me

in a stolen whisper

something of importance (i am sure of it!)

yet the droning of the vermin

swallows the melody, in one undulating gulp,

irrevocably and whole.

(pity. frozen signals. white-out noise.)

the peering frog has closed its eyes

as the flies slowly feast

perhaps a treasured mother in some twenty years

will parade adorned

in a kitschy frog-tongue shawl;

what righteous, blooming spring.

(why thank you darling. eye for eye. all's well that end's well. ha.)

the peering frog is but a memory

scorned far and wide by all

yet where is all, where i am too?

where is this mystic whole?

from a leaf in another book

perhaps i peer as well

forgetting that i am nothing but

a shard, a brick, a cell,

a scornful observer

of my master's caliber.

(how i miss that man whom i have never known.)

where is one cannot be all and where is all cannot be one -

the elders say so, but i've forgotten who they are.

the prancing dragonfly flaunts its insignificant blink of an eye

as i wonder, if there isn't a one, then who is i?

if there is no one, then who are they?

if there is none, how are there any?

if darkness descends with the sun

then perhaps they are two. perhaps they are singular.

and the leaf on which i perch my watchful eyes

is perhaps all, from which i was born

and which i scorn. and which is my demise.

(but isn't it the bane of us all?)

the peering frog has taught me this much

in its marble form

that peering is an act of one -

elusive they may be -

contemptuous they may be -

nonexistent may they be -

and the feast, that feast is for the whole.