[stylist] Poem - "Frogs" - Finalish Draft

[William L Houts]

HI Jackie,

Wonderful work.  Many  of the rhymes here are very deft and subtle.  My 
favorite is probably the very first one, but I enjoyed the whole poem.  
Also, there's a kind of autumnal feeling to the poem, a sense that the 
speaker has seen many seasons and is now reporting back to us the effect 
of weather and of the seasons on her life.  It's a very mature poem, 
Jackie, when many poems aren't.  Such good work!


--Bill



On 8/15/2015 10:14 AM, Jackie Williams via stylist wrote:
> Bill,
> I once vowed I would answer a poem with a poem. Here is mine. The intense
> rhyme will irritate those who do not favor rhymed poetry.
> By the way, yours was powerful in both the emotion and regret.
>
> I Fight for Little Things
>
> A world of rainbows, mackerel skies, cloud-reaching trees-
> they mesmerize like shorelines tracing restless seas.
> We soar with birds, and seek rare flowers, follow bees.
> Our world lights up with babies' smiles that give us ease.
>
> It is not good enough. We're busy killing frogs.
> Imagine for a moment stillness on those logs
> where, she, a creature living in the forest bogs
> deposits all her eggs, cocooned by misty fogs.
>
> A noose, man's greed, is slipped around her pulsing gut-
> delivers her to some fat, pompous, gourmand's glut.
> Those frog legs, caviar, rare truffles, and-now what!
> With her absorptive skin she takes in toxins-smut
>   
> to tadpoles metamorphosing in waters, cool
> and clear. They do not know the bottom of the pool
> is laced with chemicals that mutilate and fool
> this species-unimportant to our human rule.
>
> Our global warming does not make us more aware
> of frogs, their eggs, or if the tadpoles have a prayer
> in sizzling temperatures gone wrong, polluted air,
> and fading ecosystems dying everywhere.
>
> The pristine habitat now rare throughout their world
> has fed an ugly fungus where the tadpoles swirled.
> While slowly, transformation to a frog unfurled-
> just eighteen days and then to death they whirled.
>
> In city smog and forest bog our fates are crossed.
> Yet she is me and I am her. I fear we're lost.
>
> Our futures, stretched too thin-in carelessness-are tossed
> to unimportant values.
> Worlds could burn or frost.
>
>
> I have just submitted this to the League of Minnesot poetry contest.
>
> Jackie Lee
>
> Time is the school in which we learn.
> Time is the fire in which we burn.
> Delmore Schwartz	
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L
> Houts via stylist
> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2015 6:55 AM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Cc: William L Houts
> Subject: [stylist] Poem - "Frogs" - Finalish Draft
>
>
>
> Good Morning, Droogies,
>
> I wrote this a little while ago, but hadn't posted it until now. This
> one's still kind of painful, as it refers to an event from my teen years
> which I have yet to llive down entirely.  I feel pretty good about this
> one, as it's gone through many drafts and I've finally punched it into a
> shape I can bear without wincing.  As always, your mileage may vary.
>
> --Bill
>
>
> ---
>
>
> *Frogs *
>
> Small as infant toes, the frogs
>
> enlivened smiling sandss, so close
>
> to oceans helix deep. They swarmed the grains,
>
> that hopper tribe, like Greeks
>
> besieging Troy, though not so fierce.
>
> and Then come  I:
>
> an anguished boy enshrilled
>
> by growing-juice, and infant slights
>
> and rage, that demon muse.
>
> I plowed them down,  that day of wrath,
>
> bestormed those tiny lives,and neither grieved,
>
> nor prayed, nor wept a blackened tear.
>
> I've staggered years this infant crime
>
> while Friends suggest I'm clean and not so lost:
>
> and yet I bear a holocaust.
>
>
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>


-- 


"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"