Golem in the Grass

Golem in the Grass

A toad in state of spread-leg, dried

Demise, withered like some

Discarded specimen, ingredient for rites or potions or

Totemic animal embalmed beside

Its pharaoh. It has significance,

Lying embedded in our lawn,

A hieroglyph,

Part of a cartouche for families inhabiting this block,

This island rock.

The mouth gapes,

Caught intoning some last gasp,

The fingers claw.

I nearly trod on it.

Staring skyward under flapping clothes,

The funerary pennants of a feudal lord,

It brings into a grey suburban day

The hint of other worlds and distant things.

Rhinella Marina, toxins intact,

Island hopped the vast

Pacific divide,

Arrived, or did it wash ashore

On some ill omen of a tide?

No.

We packaged it in a careful cardboard box,

102 to be precise, all cuddled up.

We let them go …

Now they hide in dusty red or brown,

Fox like but with poison glands,

Or sink amidst the lush and green,

Rabbit earnest in their spread.

They swim the erstwhile pristine streams

And glower at us in the night

Moving landscapes in their warty wake,

Enveloping just to extrude

More poison with more latitude.