Elizabeth Jaeger - Croak (1918)

Forgotten Poems #26

  
       When it darkens and rains
I am not anything human:
I am a frog.
I shelter myself under moss-covered stones,
       Blink out at people,
       Who passing leave such queer marks,
       And say: “Damn the water
       	               Damn the mud
       	                  Damn everything.”
With relish I croak in my nook.
  

Elizabeth Jaeger (p. 1918, etc.)

P: A Pagan Anthology (1918), etc.

“The ‘remarkable’ Elizabeth Jaeger... second wife of prominent Chicago businessman Horatio Odell Stone, and recognised as an ‘undisputed social leader’.” (Eleanor Fitzsimons, Wilde's Women, 2017)

I have a special fondness for poems about frogs, ever since reading Kobayashi Issa, who wrote hundreds of frog haiku, many of which can be found amongst David Lanoue’s wonderful translations. The opening tercet of Jaeger’s ‘Croak’ also has a distinctly haiku feel to it;

 
       When it darkens and rains
       I am not anything human:
       I am a frog.
 

Here’s a few haiku of mine about frogs, very much influenced by Issa, dating from 2012-2016 (and a new one, just for good measure):

       this heat
           contemplating twilight—
                a frog

       twilight frog it jumps i jump

              (for Laurence Stacey)

       even the frog
             jealous
                  of his last verse

       moon frog moon
                                      forever

              (for Elizabeth Jaeger)

       the frog i try becoming croaks

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More poems about stones . . .