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Not everything is fake.
THE POWER OF TOADS
by PATTIANN ROGERS
from THE IOWA REVIEW
nominated by THE IOWA REVIEW, John Allman and David Wojahn
The oak toad and the red-spotted toad love their love
In a spring rain, calling and calling, breeding
Through a stormy evening clasped atop their mates.
Who wouldn’t sing—anticipating the belly pressed hard
Against a female’s spine in the steady rain
Below writhing skies, the safe moist jelly effluence
Of a final exaltation?
There might be some toads who actually believe
That the loin-shaking thunder of the banks, mud and rising
Filled with damp, the warm softening mud and riverlets
Are the facts of their own persistent performance.
Maybe they think that when they sing
They sing more than songs, creating rain and mist,
By their voices, initiating the union of water and dusk,
Females materializing on the banks shaped perfectly
By their calls.
And some toads may be convinced they have forced
The heavens to twist and moan by the continual expansion
Of their lung-sacs pushing against the dusk.
And some might believe the splitting light they see
The soaring grey they see above them are nothing
But a vision of the longing in their groins,
A fertile spring caught in its entirety
