The Old Pond

     After Matsuo Bashō
Slade Ravine last summer I heard a splash! In my gravid belly,
the tadpole turned too. & we saw a frog, leaping by the old pond – its piebald
slimy self.
              Silent, lumbering jumps.
I knew now what it was to be heavy.
Time came upon me.
I was lithe & young again, crawling over logs by this same pond; moss-mush gross on
my hands & knees.
Silence.
Listen! There was a moment after I slipped when an algae bloom appeared like grass
that might break my fall. But oh! I plummeted into blue-black.
           Held there by my own weight I drowned.
           I lay dead.
                   Crisp packets & coke cans decayed alongside me.
I lay dead for one thousand years – until, in the next new millennium, something slithered
suddenly through my rotted lips & the tadpole hatched inside my body, stirring it to life.