At a Writers’ Workshop

I draw the drapes a little and peer
Out: the sky is dark, rain starts to fall.
I cannot hear its sound—
Leaves twitch at every drop, the pool ripples.
The frogs in the rain hop around.

Cased in by thick glass that mirrors back
The room: I see myself, the other writers,
The glow from our cigarettes, the smoke
Rising up to a cloud hanging over our heads.
Like a cartoonist I imagine balloons of words—
Please string and fly them, light as poetry!
Wanting to go out, I raise my hand, my fingers
Stab the air and the words drop into
Mouths that open and close open close…

I remember another rainy afternoon
Waist-deep in a pond, I saw on a lotus leaf
A frog snap at a fly, its tongue a blur of quick.

(“At a Writers’ Workshop,” same stanza)

So unlike me with a temper, and net in hand—
            In Zoology class I cut open
The specimen I finally caught, found its tongue
Shriveled, gray like the sky above the factory
Beside the swamp where frogs have a field day
With falling ashes.
                                    So I cast off my sewn-up
Frog in a paper boat, and a chorus of mating calls
Was struck, and my prayer, rain on paper.

The rain has stopped but the frogs are still out.
I can almost hear them singing to each their
Need and love, o listen—
                                                Outside it is raining poems.