Poems from Living Here
45 Days, the poem
Emerging from hibernation in a cold spring rain
guided by the moon and stars, and
the smell of warming rot in an icy pool,
The male calls wildly
The estrus- crazed female,
she of massive swollen girth,
waits gravid.
They don’t call back.
The much smaller, but driven, male
mounts and holds on
for 24 hours.
That’s called amplexus.
Eggs hang suspended,
layered, enclosed,
in jellied capsules,
velvety black above,
ivory white below;
in vitelline membranes,
in globular clutches,
100 clutches a frog.
Cells divide,
tail buds form,
then gills enlarge.
And if the predators don’t get them,
and if the rain does not wash them away,
and if the pool stays wet, then
the jelly will become opaque.
The eggs will hatch.
Mouths will open.
The operculum forms.
The tadpole eats constantly,
and swims rapidly,
and grows.
The frog will grow first two rear legs,
Then two front ones,
And finally there is a re-absorption of the tail.
The young froglet emerges
from the pool,
up to a mile into the woods,
where it spends the summer and then,
settles down to spend the winter.
There is a 1/6000 chance when a wood frog is born that
it will not be eaten,
it will not be washed away,
it will to be run over or
poisoned,
freeze to death, or just die.