i'm sure it means something, i just don't know what

i found a little, dessicated frog.
its legs, its body, leathered by the sun.
it wasn't dead, although it would be soon,
it lay on the short grass down at the park
i go to with the dog most afternoons.

just now, a memory flashed past my eyes.
i must have been 15, 16 at most,
and we were driving, late at night, along
a little country highway headed to
the cabin in New Hampshire where we spent
the month of August. both sides of the road
went down to marshes. as we came around
a bend, we drove into a heavy rain.
and suddenly the road had come alive
with frogs, in thousands, crossing back and forth.
the rain was crackling on the volvo's roof
and frogs were popping underneath the wheels.
my mom pulled over, shut the engine down,
but even after we had waited there
for half an hour, frogs covered the road,
and it was late, too late to sit and wait.

i only saw the frog because i heard
it croak, a raspy little sound, stiffled,
as if it had a frog stuck in it's throat.
and even though i knew that it would die
more slowly if i left it where it lay,
i couldn't bring myself to lift my boot
and bring it down and crush that little voice.

it's couplets, but needs to be turned into a sestina eventually

she laughed at first to think
the waking world imposes on my dreams.

it's sad she said, that you
can't just have fun at night when you're asleep.

you see, in dreams, for her,
she lives a different life than this one here,

since sometimes i'm not there
she's free to kiss whoever comes along.

it's not that i don't cheat
it's just that i feel guilty in the dream

for what i'm doing. she
had taken other lovers in her sleep

but never thought it strange.
and when we woke, she kissed me and she said,

i had the weirdest dream
last night. she told me how it went and when

she finished i kissed her.
i never had a dream like that before,

she said. i know i have.
and somehow that she had one makes me glad.

wind and desert but no stars

there's no chance that i've got a new email
it's 1am, and i checked it 6 minutes ago.

but i check it anyway, just in case,
mostly to see if i still exist, despite
the evidence to the contrary.

the dog is using me for a pillow. she got up
to chase the cats, but decided better of it.
that's something, anyway.

if i still existed, it stands to reason,
there would be something more for me to do
than check my email twice at 1am.

totally unedited thought alone at 1am

It wasn't so much the way the streets
were never the same, or so it seemed.
and it wasn't the way gelatto melts
down the cone to run on my fingetips.

and it wasn't the way the fountains flowed.
and it wasn't the way that the sun beat down.
it wasn't the wine, or the absynthe sting
and it wasn't the tune that the tiber sings
and it wasn't the pillars, nor any arch
and it wasn't the latin engraved thereon.
it wasn't the classes, it wasn't the books
it wasn't the girl with the sultry looks
that i passed on the street almost every day
and it wasn't the bridge i crossed on my way

it was just the air, and the air alone
and the weight of each step on every stone
or not just air, and not just stone, it was class
and gelatto and fountains and girls
and the tiber's eddys and angry swirls
and the cover band on the river's banks
and the nights we bought wine and we all got tanked
by an ancient shrine, and the pillars there
and the arches inscribed with latin, and stares
from tall, dark girls, and the fountain spray
and a sense of purpose.

the rhyme's gotta break. it sucks.
but that was rome, and i've never been happier.
as happy, perhaps, and even as filled
but never more. there was magic there.
real magic. the kind of magic that makes the streets change
every time i tried to find my way somewhere.
the kind that makes the river bend
every time i thought i finally knew where it turned.
the kind of magic that makes you cry to see a statue
because you're that sure it's a real woman
because you're that sure that a man's really dying
because you're that sure caesar's really watching.
because the bold only taste of death but once,
and prophetic sounds arise from even pallid stones.

Totally Unrelated to Poetry

but hilarious, nonetheless...

the new pooch, warming up to her new surroundings.