Tonight, in bed, we hear the frogs that just emerge
somehow when ditches fill with rain outside our house.
Sounds like a chorus of coffee-counter men
grumbling for a refill. To our ears, at least—to theirs,
who knows, seduction? A way to find another frog
that’s crawled through dirt to find himself immersed
in water, darkness, song? I keep thinking of that day
we stepped on a hornets’ nest, you carrying the baby
on your back, me orbiting your precious double form.
They rose so angry, embers set on burning holes
into my hands and arms, your neck, but not one
touched the child, as though some force protected her
from stings—our love? I’m not naive. We cleared
the railroad tracks, that buried hive, so quick
and swatted off their panicked first defense
before they reached her tender flesh, fat hands
and wrists and cheeks exposed though shadowed
under wide-brimmed hat and slicked with SPF-
a-million. Our love, yes. A set of spells we cast
each time we left our little flat. You say maybe
our frogs, too, come from underground, not
to sting us in their rage, just to complain, or mate.
It goes on all night, and sometimes I wake thinking
it’s your breath or the dog whimpering in sleep,
or our kid, though even if she shouted from her bed
I wouldn’t hear. She’s hundreds of miles away
and five stories up in a city that for all I know is one big
swarm of burning stings. So long we hovered. Swaddled.
Happy to supply our own thin skin for hers. Tonight,
I offer mine, again, to you. When people ask about her
now as though she’s died, we check ourselves all over
for the bruise of grief. They don’t know how quickly
the strange calm of our days can turn electric, afternoon
into evening, your fingers, your tongue into song.
