A frog jumps from a lily
to a lily, but between the two
it disappears
in this moment: a body
is absent, no legs extended
there is a rounded kind of stillness
from one second to the next
there is, inserted,
a pause
between two houses, a narrow alley
between two words, a breath
between two waves, the smoothness of water
this is the same parabola
extended, contracted
inverted over a horizon
a frog exists on the crest of a wave
and between two crests exists a point
in which no frog exists
from one lily and the next
an absence
leaping
Portia Yu is a writer from Hong Kong. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, LIKE A FEVER and Frontier , among others. In addition, she has appeared in Where Else: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology. She has written poems about many animals such as bees, tigers, fish, snails, and of course, frogs.