The Frog Being Eaten

by Laura Puryear Finnell

A woman, driving in late afternoon, remembers a moment
from childhood: how she found a frog
at the edge of the ravine,
how its legs kicked in weak spasms as it sank
in the rhythm of a swallowing throat
and she watched, afraid to touch this thing,
afraid if she came too close
it would touch her.

Now, crossing over a tea-colored creek, she knows
the muddy edges of the bay hold a thousand frogs,
still, she curls her drive-time meditation around this one thing
from more than thirty years ago.

The frog disappeared slowly into the soft loam
of Carolina, where she'd lived then,
no blood, no sound, no coming up to look around,
but only the fight,
and then the end of that.
No more kicking, its pale legs
showing raw in the late afternoon white of March.
Her mother came to stand behind her at the end, saying:
A snake. Come in now, let's get your bath.

Winter tilts away, southward, and patches of shadow
rise to the water's surface, a sadness from within,
not starting in the clouds or sun that washes
across the rearview mirror, only briefly,
slipping into a dark pocket of the clotted sky.