(a par-o-dy)
So the phone doesn’t ring so much anymore,
not that phones actually ring these days,
but you know what I mean. The world’s moved on.
Once, an elderly lady in an assisted-living community
painted me. A friendly portrait. Handsome and happy.
For as long as she could get out, she kept me—
a plush me—fastened to the grill of her P.T. Cruiser
like a figurehead maiden or dragon on a ship
above the breaking waves. Except, a frog above the slush.
She had me on her scarf, too, both sides, like twins,
and enjoyed when the young baristas said “I love your scarf”
at her haunt just off the local campus.
That painting hung a long time above her usual table
after she’d gone. Now, even the coffee shop’s long over and done.
There’s a lot of my old mugs out there on Ebay.
And Pez dispensers! Remember Pez? Gosh.
But who knows where that painting’s gone. I’m not complaining.
Have you heard Ray Charles cover “It’s Not Easy Being Green?”
Or how about Willie’s “Rainbow Connection?”
And people once saw something of themselves
in me. How many frogs get to say that?
And I still get a little work now and then,
thanks to the old fallbacks PBS and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day.
But it’s like the Buddhists say; everything goes away.
Like the Swamp. Some manufacturing guy from Chicago
bought the whole shore. Um hm. Runs his Jet Skis
back and forth and shoots fireworks a couple times a year.
Sure it’s sad. But you gotta move on. I’ve found
a marsh on public land with cattails and redwing blackbirds
and delicious dragonflies, all amphitheatered by velvety pines.
Am-phi-theatered, am-phi-theatered. Amphi-…theatered.
Look, there’s only so many days in a life.
The moon comes out like a spotlight just after sunset,
and I’ve still got the banjo.
Jonathan Johnson is the author of seven books, including the October 2025 releases Pine, a collection of poems, and The Little Lights of Town, a collection of stories. Kermit was among his earliest teachers.