Playing hide and seek with a lawnmower
can’t be good for frogs. There was one
doing just that the other day as I cut
my rows one by one over by the pear tree.
I guess it was lost—there were no
ponds or pools right there, only shade
and some long grass to hide in. Each time
I came near, it would hop into the safety
of the next uncut row as my dragon
of a mower roared by, belching bits
of undigested grass. And it would sit,
still as death, as I passed, but its heart
was racing and those periscope eyes
were awash in fear and it seemed to will
each tight bundle of stringy muscles
not to twitch. It had left the invisibility
of our murky, overgrown stream barely
a hundred feet away and was caught
in this netherworld between instinct
and exile and its only way out was
to stay one row ahead of the mower
while I tried not to be the instrument
of some cruel force amusing itself
in an innocent corner of our back yard.