Spawning on the Allotment

This poem is a celebration of frogs. The wild life pond is currently jam-packed with frogs and frog spawn. I think it's almost impossible not to smile while frog spotting.



Spawning on the Allotment
Come Spring and frogs go frolicking
in pond weed soup among marigolds,
loosestrife, water crowfoot.
Plopping, slip-slopping about,
singing to each other
from a hundred boggy throats
and soon from a hundred green and yellow bodies,
come a million jellied eggs.

Then in the dregs of summer,
a yellow frog,
a wrinkle of light,
disturbed by all the digging,
hops from the dark edge of the plot
and in the time it takes to blink,
disappears.


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