Frog ponds swallow the sun like salt, and prawns turn back to clods. Geese sip the last brown sap and flap, flap to rise. The wart hog flounders, the least beast of creation, halffinished, formed of the mud of the fields. In pitch between corpses of monkeys and snakes, the flesh of halfeaten gazelles, frogs hold their breath, wedging their skulls deep, deep into holes until it rains. Here, the lung fish wallows and thrashes, gills down, thick lips like a bass gulping air, in the shallow molasses of mud.
Bubbles rise up from the breath hole.
Mud hardens over its mouth, the earth's own throat. This fish, dried flat as faith, turns stiff, but if it rains, if it floods, it will live. Backpacking at FiftyNine Listen, she whispered, squeezing my wrist. Down on both knees, I laced her boots. For years, we pitched that tent like second skin and now, silence, except tapping, a peaceful mood.