Conversations

Today's poem is about those spring-time "conversations" which seem to go on so furiously around ponds. Frogs! There seem to be hundreds ... maybe thousands ... of them, all adding their voices to the din.

I remember them well from the place where I grew up ... they seemed to be in especially good voice at night ... somehow conveying a certain kind of "all's well" to the listener.

But, feeling my way back through the early morning fog of my brain, I don't think I heard them this year. Maybe I just wasn't in the right place at the right time.

Could it be that I haven't been listening? Or that I've simply ... well, forgotten?

Which somehow reminds me ... as one thought leads to another ... I've fallen behind on "conversations" myself ... those little "Afterthoughts" I try to post in response to your comments.

I don't know how this happens, but it does. It's happened before. I always regret it. I always try to catch up, but I never feel I've done that completely, either.

I do apologize ... again ... for my slippage in that department ... and I do hope to do better ... soon ... I hope ...

Meanwhile, today's poem:

CONVERSATIONS

How vexing to hear
the voices of those
I could not see
abruptly going silent,
like the gabble of pupils
halting in the presence
of a new teacher.

Then, after I'd passed,
renewed murmur of gossip
growing rumor-upon-rumor,
going mouth-to-ear, flying
too swiftly to follow,
too dense to filter
into any semblance
of real meaning.

If I dared step too near,
I heard sounds like stones
plopping into water,
new silence ascending,
a sense of being watched
by large, careful eyes
judging me from the depths
of a green-coated pond.
© 1997
(originally published in M.O.O.N. Magazine)

Today's word: gabble