Old Frogs

for Norman MacCaig

I take some comfort from old frogs

who squat around the pond

like bodhisattvas, contemplating

nothing but their own exclusion

from the world beyond them, falling

deeper into selfless

silence and the dereliction

of all duty but to sit like this,

apart from offspring

leaping in the air or falling

through their parachutes of flesh

or dying on the road like Jesus,

with their arms outstretched.

Articulate composure

is their mode, as unheroic as

the rocks around them,

clumped and cooling as the night comes on.