Pandemonium

Pandemonium

The frogs are chorusing tonight.

The peepers chime like ten thousand winter sleigh bells

rung by ecstatic Salvation Army volunteers.

Meanwhile, the toads trill at diverging pitches,

harmonizing in drones like a hall of chanting Buddhists.

All night they sing.

Whenever I wake up, they’re still there

in the dark and the damp

under the moon and stars that stagelight

their Dionysian debauch.

I have tried to sneak up on them

to witness the passion that has brought them,

and their thousands of generations before,

to these ephemeral ponds.

But even in the midst of their single mindedness,

they always hear me

and go stone quiet.

If I wait long enough,

one will give in to his need for a mate and begin singing again.

Then the choral dam breaks,

the din commences

because it must.

It’s a game of Russian roulette,

this fertilizing of eggs.

The bet is that the pools won’t dry up

before the great metamorphosis,

from fins to legs

from gills to lungs

from water to forest.

All this.

Then, without apparent discussion,

they agree to gather again,

here,

next spring,

when a south wind will warm air and water just enough

triggering their tumultuous voices

like a thousand drunken guests at a lavish wedding party

breathing rapture in the dark spring night.