than lizards are to frogs,
toads burping in Permian swamps
still here with other amphibians,
mudpuppies whisking the gumbo
of ponds, newts rooting gullies for worms.
Renunciate monks lash their backs
with branches, envisioning
topdown hierarchies of God
over angels to people over snakes.
Dividing flesh from spirit, they ignore
crickets making love in barns, moonlight
buttering gold whiskers of hay
and the stock tank, where,
as three hundred million years before,
tadpoles pop from frogspawn
in the bog’s moss-bewitched cauldron
to bud legs and toes, vertebrae
hardened from cartilage, a body
the same structure as Saint Peter’s bones.
Eric Fisher Stone is a PhD student in creative writing, a GTA and tutor, at Oklahoma State University. He has three full-length collections of poems published, most recently, Bear Lexicon from Clare Songbirds Publishing House.