Frogs in a Bucket
I collect words, words that hide in sweetgrass and mud, words from poems or stories or essays or songs.
Stolen words not one my own. Rich words for ransom or bait.
I collect them in buckets like frogs from a creek peeking up at me marble-eyed.
There’s “brood” and “perch” and “pelt” their long legs stretching toward the light. Throats pulse, they ask:
Can thoughts be “rancid”? Can sound be “dappled”? Can light be “veined”? Can sentences “flinch”?
I collect words like arrows through straw bales like frogs in a bucket they look up and pray.
Island
Skin sizzled brown. The heft of age and success drag the belt down.
Umbrellas shadow patches of sand, trace a sundial hand from rise to set.
Watch from land the chess moves of cruise ships the titan yachts, the anchored phantoms.
There’s a beat of silence between each spill of bantam wave, scrubbing boulders of dead coral. This beach eager to wash away.
Sit and read and sweat. Wade in, remember, regret. The prosperous in sparking epilogue.
Ned Kraft, a librarian by trade, has published satire, poetry, and short stories in such places as Phoebe, Against the Grain, Streetlight, Thieving Magpie, and the South Street Star.