Toad Ode

I submit this with my already-given apologies to Liz, our poet of note. Italy does strange things to people. It made me write a poem. About a toad.




Ode on an Umbrian Toad

O beige spotted rock
Whose skin gives to the touch,
Alligator shoe without laces,
Purse that blinks and bears no money,
There you rest in a grassy hole
Hiding in full view,
Startling those who mistake you
For dirt or anything other
Than what you are.

We, the lumbering tourists, stare down
From our height and fuss over you
So that our landlord Aldo
Comes with fireplace tools
To spare us the unsightliness,
Which is actually what we love
In all that expanse of photogenic countryside,
You with the toxic sweat,
You with the warts.

Disclaimer: No toads were harmed as a result of our tourism.

Secondhand Lion: Part 3 of Our Cat Trilogy

As a kitten on my Aunt Mid’s farm, Kit slept on the enclosed porch, but spent his days chasing after anything that moved. Birds. Butterflies. Falling leaves. When my aunt died and we inherited Kit, we turned him into a neutered, indoor cat. Not that he complained. He had a cat door to the upstairs deck, where he continued to chase after flying, falling things, and he was well-pampered. When our move from Pennsylvania to Virginia became a long, slow process involving several mini-moves, we gave Kit to our son, Nathan, for safekeeping, and Nathan did not care to give him back.

Now, having lived with Nathan in Georgia for several years, Kit is aging and sickly. He is to the point where many folks would consider euthanasia, but not us. How can we put down a bright-eyed, always purring cat? Instead, we decided to put him outside. “You might as well kill him,” our daughter Megan said as she ordered him a supply of special diet cat food.

“It’s the Secondhand Lion approach,” my husband said, referring to the film of two robust older men who set loose an aging lion on their Texas farm the same summer they take in a great-nephew.

Like the Texas farm men and the secondhand lion and most of the senior citizens who come to this part of Coastal Georgia for the remainder of their lives, Kit is behaving as if he is years younger. He is active and alert and eating heartily. Perhaps he is senile and imagines himself back on the farm of his youth as he chases after palmetto bugs and live oak leaves. Or perhaps, like the rest of us, he knows his time is short and he wants to enjoy every moment.