Jessamine, jewelweed
The frogs’ songs drum across the pond until
the crisp twig’s snap uncloaks me and my dog
and—silence. One frog keeps watch for hawk
and heron. We tell our girls the kissed frog’s
a prince. His fly-stinking lipless mouth.
Jack-in-the-pulpit, honeysuckle
Into the woods, I followed the neighborhood kids.
Curve your hand around an oval stone. Skim it.
Watch the frogs duck under. Even the youngest
knew, the ink-dark pollywogs could become
bullfrogs until we scooped up their wriggling
goo and sloshed them home in pickle jars.
Carnations
In biology, we flayed open frog bellies,
tacked aside their skin with pins, exposed
their organs’ flinching pinks. Those frogs
never knew a pond. Eye of newt and toe
of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog.
Wisteria, water lily
My dog tugs away but I brace against
his muscular impatience and wait. Press
my lips quiet. Fairy tale frogs dive deep
then return, bearing treasure up from the muck.
They glide through silt suspended in water,
like clouds in sky, ferrying in their mouths
the pearl, the golden ring.
Lisa Zerkle is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She serves as an editor for Painted Bride Quarterly and reader for West Trade Review/Iron Oak Editions. As a child, on the lookout for tadpoles, she was known to haunt the edges of ponds.