It was a good sized frog.
As ever, that glistening motley
wash-leather skin – lemon, green,
yellow, black spots;
it went well with the garden leavings
piled up
with the rolled back old carpets,
April leaves, grass, roots in a heap,
it went under, blended in;
though water,
its skin matched the land colours.
At first I saw it, after a spade thrust,
spring up
then stop, elongate,
as if to show me itself,
unchopped, whole, no missing limb;
as if I’d have sense of it,
come from the beck,
and of where it fitted in.
Nicholas Bradley, 2004