Thinking about frogs 6

Here are a few frog facts to ponder before my poem. Frogs are considered highly endangered with over 7000 species. Humans are all from one species, but we have an estimated 5000 human ethnic groups which are defined primarily by cultural practices. What we would consider to be the “modern frog” has been around for 250 million years. Modern humans have been around for approximately 300,000 years. Will humans become extinct before frogs? Well, it hasn’t really happened before but there was a time when the earth’s population was somewhere around 900,000 to 1,000,000 and yet in a mass extinction was decimated to only about 1300 in the “human breeding population.” All of that to say I’ve been thinking a lot about frogs.

frogs

lately I have been thinking a lot about frogs

more specifically frogs

in a slowly heating pot of water

wondering how the frogs got into the pot

did they jump from the counter into the pot

thinking it was a pond without rocks

or lily pads or fish or floating leaves

or were they placed there by human hands

attached to arms to a body to a heart

that felt nothing about boiling a being alive

lately I have been thinking a lot about frogs

frogs in pots of water

thinking about how at first the water was tepid

and then it became warm

lulling said frogs into a hot bath slumber

until  the water began to bubble

but by then the frogs

were unable to leap out

could not have leapt anyway

because frogs don’t leap from water

they leap from stones or branches or

lately I have been thinking a lot about frogs

wondering if it is we who are

the frogs in the pot

did we climb in of our volition

and if not who put us there

who turned on the heat

and since we have hands and arms

that we could put over the rim

to pull ourselves out

while the water is uncomfortably hot

but not yet blistering

why do we stay

having idle conversations

about the weather

and about how the water

seems to be getting quite hot

devorah major