I regret to report the creek
is still too high to cross,
running muddy with white caps
where summer cobbles baked
beneath bleached moss
housing aquatic bugs—little
towns anticipating rain—
a month’s work on the other side:
clearing roads of trees, fences
under limbs, slick black calves
waiting to be stretched for an iron
and I’m inside polishing poetry
instead of oiling my saddle
I’m almost too old to ride.
No one behind your desk
to report to for twenty years,
no one to argue how to spend
time and money improving
how to get the work done
when the creek subsides.
I’ve yet to learn
where the tree frogs go,
four years drought
between symphonies.
I regret to report I’m tired
of the world beyond our fences
where there is no truth,
no beauty left in the storm
of news I’m addicted to
waiting for my daily fix,
each outrageous episode
is drama enough
to keep from thinking,
to keep from working
to keep from wanting
anything more than
where the tree frogs go.
drycrikjournal 
Love this with the attached audio! Definitely better to listen to this than the daily news dramas.
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At least we have options!
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Nailed it!
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Thanks, Ben, glad you liked it. Also thank you for the invite, but we still don’t know when we’re leaving or which way we’ll go. Why don’t you come to Elko?
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Don’t be weary. Bring your beauty beyond the fences. We need you.
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Where do they go? Down deep into the mud to hibernate? Under the house into the dark? Do they lay their eggs and die? I have found them trecking the long trip across the street to more frog songs.
I would love to hibernate with them until all the hoo-ha of our present political scene is gone. Will it ever go?
I will follow your poem!! Do they broadcast Elko anywhere on the net?
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No Internet broadcast, anymore, that I’m aware of.
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The baritone of bull frogs in the background and a hoot or two, would make it even sweeter
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I do miss the bullfrogs in April, an overwhelming sound, before we filled the pond in a short ways from the house.
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If you filled in a pond it must have been to close to the house?
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Just right, but couldn’t afford the water.
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Winter brings out the best in the poet . . .
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