Cool frog, take your hop
to next year’s barbecue burble, the people
rotund turtles, carrying their professions
toasting white smiles with their goblet mirrors.

I’ll follow; you’ll take the path
that crosses John Avenue and wends
through Ms. Janet’s row of bleeding hearts.
(I might pocket one on the way, ok?)

I don’t mind leaving it; the backyard elbowing
and the nightmare cooing in the Korean Lilac’s root
who continues on her creeping to the pipe–
in ten years, they’ll slit my violet lover up.

I like your legs, knobby and shined.
Your feet fine boats that squeak in the dew,
these grasses that are striving daily
to hide all I’ve buried in those old umber halls.

Underneath, I choose
to be the one to abandon the party, take myself
where without fail no one ever finds me
leaning on the bark of a naked white tree.

Frog, I think you better than
the blithering orchestra I am forced to attend.
You do know the best route for a girl
to make her way safely out the past.