Boiling The Frogs Poem by Mark Nichols

Sometime after the beginning of the world
And many years before its end
There is a story of the frog who sings a different song

Let us be here in frogland
A pond alive with its seasonal chorus
Sparked creation lily perched
Each bright voice is like a firefly
Lily pad lovers lay eggs
Synapse-sperm spat like
Little boy's firecracker fingers
Romance tunes songs of love and adventure:
Fugues, rounds, canons, counterpoint
City of great joy!

Barber shop corner boys
Doo op froggy babes
Century after millennium
It goes on in circles turning cycles
fortunate Spring
Lusty Summer
Busy Fall
Lazy sleep of Winter
And start again!
Amplexus fortunata
Ovum exemplar
Zygote or Tadpole
All matters because
True life (With teeny tiny teeth!)
Is bulging its elbows to POP!
This is frogland!

Utopia!
Unintentional green
Heart-filled lovers of
Invention
Improvisation
Courtship
Hop on! Great Communicators!
Brothers & Sisters
Where death is only a jump to the stars
Where Ancestors' carols are snug and sung
Where choruses of nonsense are burped ceaselessly
Where canons & vocal reunions are uninterupted
Where the sound of silence is the greatest joy
And is the beginning of the reminder of again and again
Herald the frequency of joy from a distance
Be in Frogland!


***

Sometime after the beginning of the world
And many years before its end

Something shifts
The earth below the pond coughs and weezes
There is something buzzing or bubbling
Deep in murk
Imperceptible almost to all too imperceptible

Oh yes, croak! Some lilies dying
Oh yes, croak! Something stagnant

'But we are doing nothing wrong!
We are only continuing on'
This is the song we sing

'Nothing evil
But no good neither! '
Comes a dissonant voice

A grating and new voice, unappealing
Disturbing
Out of tune
Relentless

Shut up goes the chorus
But no

'I sing a life of security
I croak the natural order of things
I burp tomes conformity
I challenge by singing the old songs
I question by croaking thru the old hymns'

'Because something has changed in our chorus
Adventure has gone from our melody
There is no hop to our harmony
Where is our unity?
Where is frogness? '

The stunned pond ponders

'We sit where we can now
In simmering scalding, bubbling
Blood boiling, brain burning
Yellow and stinking life water
The old bass is dead
The flies have all left
No dragonflies
No pond skittlers
No water beetles
No animals drinking what we sit in'

The frogs were now dreaming
Though some heard it was a faint sound

'So here we sit with thoughts unsung
Calmy content
Smugly self-satisfied
Nurturing apathy
Fearing passion'

Did this croaker's pleas reach them
Maybe somewhere deep
Probably not

'Sing frogs!
Sing brother and sisters!
Jump, hop, I'm begging now!
Remember our great frog languages
Kwaak-kwaak
Gar gar
Quo guo
Kwak kwak
Ribbit
Croak
Coa-coa
Quaak, quaak
Kwa kwa
Bre-ke-ke
Kerokero
Gae-gool-gae-gool
Kva-kva
Berp
Ob ob
Vrak vrak! '

'Remember our chaotic and beautiful singing
Rousing and harmonious!
Remember our lives
The lives in our songs
So complex and so intricate! '

The dulls eyes only grew duller

'I am the croaker, sings a different tune
Who also gets stabbing hunger pains with each song
Who is lonely singing without you
Who hates warning songs more than any other
But I'll croak it again
Something is not right in the Frogland'

Be quiet like everyone else
The fattest and oldest says

'Can't you see you are not hopping?
Just sitting in the water, barely bobbing
Who was the last one of us to catch a fly
With long frog tongue?
When was the last time we sang in harmony?
Now we barely croak
Come with me!
We must go!
The pond is a quiet place
Not a croak, ribbit
No kwak kwak
No gar gar
No guo guo

I hate to tell you that no one was listening any more
And they fell one by one
One by one
Sank to the bottom

Only one hopped away into the unknown

***

I wish that I could tell you an alternate telling of the tale
Where the frogs began to sing new songs
Inspired by the disruptive frog
Where they all decide as a collective to jump away
I'll work on that one