Although it’s midwinter, the dream
of the toads sings through the chill,
seething and simmering and filling
the day, conjuring riper seasons.
Walking by the half-frozen marsh,
I let that dream enhance me
with those primal russet passions
Thoreau enjoyed but resisted
in light of the Enlightenment.
The collective dream smokes from
holes where those creatures hibernate.
It congeals and becomes audible
like the flight of an arrow
the instant before it strikes you.
Thoreau thought all nature spoke
through this dream. But no one else
seemed to hear it. I wouldn’t,
either, if I weren’t walking alone
with my head empty as a shell
on a beach. The toads don’t care
who overhears or shares their dream.
The tattered look of January
after a couple of days of thaw
conducts the electric shudder
of the dream of the toads as surely
as a glance conducts illicit desire.
I’m tempted to slog across the marsh
and approach the source, but the ground
looks mucky enough to absorb me;
and the ice on the shallows, despite [stanza break]
a glint of sun, looks sad and gray.
The dream of toads keeps fluttering
inside me. But when I get home
it dissipates like a vision
of a richly upholstered future,
divinely sparked, soon forgotten.
Artwork by: Henri Rousseau (le Douanier)
