The Bull Frog

He explodes through the surface
like a grenade
painted pond-scum green,
and leaves a window deep into the marsh.
How satisfying -- that fat smack,
that wet-bellied plop upon a rotted trunk,
near a log jam of dog turds.

Chin held high, he perches
over stink congealing in a pile
between the bullrush stems,
beside a frenzied cloud of bluebottles
glinting cobalt in the sun.
Their buzz unrolls his tongue,
long, pink, syruped.

He freezes motionless, for minutes,
green-suckered fingers dripping,
until a fly alights and vomits
on the shitted trove,
where a hundred eggs
have hatched and woven whiteness
through the brown.

I doubt fillet mignon with brandy sauce
could taste as fine to me
as fly to frog,
pasted like a fuzzy, buzzing stamp
upon a tongue cast out
and reeled home within a second.

Frog mouth snaps shut, eyes blink,
gossamer wings hum
upon his lips til silenced
when he shifts his legs,
mulls the splatter,
swallows hard.

Then his proclamation --
like a cello string plucked
inside a sunken leather shoe --
a resonant twang, damped
by flesh and tongue
and lingering blue morsels.

Scott Speck
08/20/2001