There you are again, Bufo, you survivor you.
Throughout this long, hot time,
as the merciless sun has baked the grass
and hardened both the ground beneath my feet
and the words out of my mouth,
you have molded yourself and shaped your small world and it has been enough–the trickles from the tank, quite enough.
I worry for your life each time I draw back the stock tank and tip it and scrub it and slide it back.
You are there, still, throbbing, blinking, holding your ground.
Once or twice, stirred by my shadow, you have chosen a better crease or hollow for your regard of my busy, noisy ways.
Mostly you just lie still. Conserving, calculating, stoically waiting for the damp darkness once more to embrace you.
How often have I groused at this hellish aberration of a spring and summer we are living through,
only to pull back the tank and see you there in that tiny, slithery, dank, sub-rosa world of yours.
No no poison of entitlement has clouded your vision of your world–paratoid, as it is, behind your eyes, not in front.
Great lessons from God’s “lowliest creatures!!