Jack D. Harvey

Bufo
 
They told me
the tree toad
in faraway Malabar
has no dreams;
in faraway Malabar
the tree toad
living in the trees
of the Western Ghats
they told me,
has no dreams;
that his dry flesh
lives forever,
unbound by any whorl of time;
eons the leaves protect him,
hide him, keep him dry;
his ways are every day the same,
and night, his friend,
and the moon before his eyes
enfold the muted gleam
of the precious stones
deep in his ancient head;
protection for his
poisonous flesh
they told me,
antidote for the falling sickness
and the Borgia rings.
 
He doesn’t know or care.
He sees far beyond
his canopy of trees,
this living landscape,
never changing its face;
the salty dividing sea
and the crusty young world
he sees, clear as today,
here and now
millions of years roll by,
rolled up in his timeless gaze.
 
Who then,
stretched down
through the steaming
new-born world,
what was the giant hand
they told me
that touched his precious
head, dry as the desert sand,
then gone in a moment,
left him to his own devices?
 
Who indeed?
 
Would he dream?
Do they lie
who told me?
Does the burden
of those powerful jewels
hidden in his head,
worth more than
rubies or diamonds,
destroy his true nature,
his waking, his sleeping,
his being more than
any mortal creature should be?
 
And what would he dream?
 
On the ground
of his immortal life,
sound of water in a pond,
water in a pond,
a hasty splash and gone.
 

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. His book, Mark the Dwarf, is available on Kindle.