We park where they hike off
Route Seven in Massachusetts,
then we don’t hike. We eat Stop
& Shop food on a bench by
a clean but public pond with
dragonflies and polliwogs where
we see all the way to bottom.
Shaded by a crabapple tree,
I am reading in a book how
the Chinese called frogs sky-
roosters and how Jakob Lorber
said they crow like apostles.
It’s getting to late afternoon when,
I also read, the setting sun
warms the place of the dead
so that new children walk up from
wells and ponds to find places
safe enough to stay. Pea pods
were two for the price of one
at the Stop & Shop. The children
who walk up from wells might want
these once they dry off,
plus laugh to hear a bullfrog make
his rubber-band boing, this
toystore banjo sound a boy
would use to annoy his sister
in the hallway between
their upstairs bedrooms after
they’ve walked up from the wells.
So glad you made it out is what
I see as the sky apostle’s message.
Don’t stop now. We watch with him
while cars whiz by going to
Mount Greylock and crickets climb
through our bag of deli chicken as
the world turns its back on where
it was in the morning, while kids
we can’t even see hike right through
us hoping it won’t be as hard on
them here in a quiet spot in an
entire galaxy as it wanders away,
using up the universe.