Out of the dark rains
emerges a Sonoran toad.
His skin like an avocado,
dark, dimpled, thick.
Red dots betray its youth.
In the patter of raindrops,
his kind call in the night,
like muted horns of ships
stranded in an ocean of fog.
This toad finds rich feeding
beneath the back porch,
bugs drawn to the dryness,
clamoring to the light.
This buffet of corn bugs,
moths, and roaches suits
the hulking green monster,
until he eyes a dung beetle
big enough to fill him full.
The toad is slow, lumbers
toward this boon. The beetle
is slower, has no idea he’s
about to become Jonah
in the belly of a monster.
One gulp seems sufficient.
The toad swallows him whole.
The beetle wallows in darkness.
A contest of wills ensues.
The beetle breaks free,
bursts from the maw,
sticky from stomach acid,
reeling from noxious slime.
The surprised toad decides
his stomach is bigger
than his eyes, tries again
to consume the beetle
who refuses to be eaten.
The beetle wins a second
and third round in this battle,
tickling the throat, slipping past
clenched lips, falling to the floor,
exhausted, stuck in toxic glue.
The toad contemplates the stillness,
seems willing to call it a draw,
rather than feel scratching claws again.
Still hungry, he flees his nightmare.
I love this poem! You'd have to know my lifelong paranoia about toads and frogs to understand how this one struck me. It's another from your collection that I read more than once to fully appreciate.
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