I have spent the day

Hunkered in my little house

Tinkering at my little hobbies

Getting my usual work done.

With a standard scrub at my teeth

I watch the sun head down

Before hunkering down to bed.

Sleep wraps me in her savory arms

And I await a frolicking in my dreams.

The night is perfect:

The air as cool as my breath,

The sky gently dark,

Miles of earth shrouded in a silence

That’s filled with dangerous comfort

I am ready to meet sleep in a kiss

When there’s the

Croak.

The night splits apart,

The calm and the chill that welcomed me to sleep making way for a

Croak.

I am awake.

It is late.

I am tired,

My mind begging for that gentle rest back,

I need to refresh.

It is late.

I am awake.

Croak.

There is a frog outside.

Nearly two a.m., with a world of wonder and possibility awaiting in the morning

And I will not greet it

Because an exhausted mind will chain me to bed all day.

Because I am awake.

Because of a frog.

Croak.

A frog that will not shut up.
I give fort my greatest effort to ignore:

Pillows over heads, fingers in ears

But layer after layer of auditory blockage is bolstered up in vain.

Croak.

Mr. Frog ribbits through anyways.

I let time pass,

Surely I’ll become so fatigued that this

Croaking

Can no longer pester me to consciousness.

The minutes fly by like rocks

And after eons of that incessant

Croak

I am so much more tires

And sop much further from sleep.

 

What gives this frog the right

Croaking

Out into the night keeping good people away from their sumptuous beds?

Who does he think he is?

Some sort of royalty that has the privilege of resting all day

That he would not need sleep at night

And can then spend the twilight

Croaking

In search of some sort of mate,

All the while keeping up

The  birds, the bees, flora and fauna, the moon and mother nature herself

And most importantly me

Awake because of his

Croaking.

He has the whole universe within his froggy little foot to explore

Can he not take his grating

Croak

To some other corner of the universe.

Surely if he is so rich as to be able to afford a night’s rest

He can garner up his froggy little goods

Kiss his family goodbye

With a resounding smack from his froggy tongue

That must be dry as the Sahara by now from that

Croaking

And adventure off into the night.

Rather than

Croaking

incessantly

Nothing is stopping him from jumping into the sky

Skipping across star-swirls and galaxies.

Discovering the vastness of space and the existence within it

And unveiling for himself a purpose to live by.

There is no reason he cannot leap down into the ocean

Swimming by schools and tentacles

giving his sea legs a whirl

and finding that while he may be a frog

swimming isn’t something he’s fond of.

He could so easily hop across the continent,

Discover the species of brazil

Or trudge through the rain forest

And uncover a universe worth of culture and life

That holds a welcoming hand out just for him.

There are friends to be made

Leisure to be had

Excitement to engage in

Lessons to learn

Room to grow.

All of the world has conspired over all the billions of years for him:

Each grandparent of his grandparent

Met at just the right time

Eventually forming the family line

That would contain a bundle of atoms

That make up the cells

That labor in every millisecond of their existence

So that this one singular frog

May live.

What he could do with his personal miracle of life

Is quite literally endless.

And with all these open roads standing before him,

Opportunity always bowed before his wake

This tiny little frog chooses instead—

Instead of journey and joy—

To sit outside my window and

Croak.

 

I am awake and I am dreaming and all I want to do is sleep and it’s ever so close tantalizing my eyelashes with its gentle grasp and then

Croak.

It is late.

I am tired.

There is a frog outside.

I should be asleep.

I should be learning, I should be laughing and crying and angry and forgiving

I should be out living.

I need to go to sleep.

Instead I write a poem.