A Treefrog in my Father’s Greenhouse by Joshua Brunetti

By the okra and behind the lettuce and kale,
There sits a structure, a persistent estate
with foundation as natural as clouds,
Recumbent soil nearly undisturbed,

A triumph over seasons, all growth
Seems static in just one visit
To this joyous imposition,
This invocation of light,

And yet something stirs– an amphibious tenant
Clinging to a vertical plane in this Escherian house
Where cucumbers dangle like isolate bananas
Above rows of tenacious tomatoes;

A treefrog, Caesar unto only himself,
Hurling his vibrato voice into the void of night,
Lusty, longing for his counterpart
Who is both stranger and mate,
Unknowingly bound to Earth’s
Drawn-out diurnal maelstrom,
Placidly careening along a path as predestined
As that of the neglected cucumber,
Which descends like a gentle meteor,
To be found, or left to rot, amongst the tomatoes,
Like some sad, green satellite, like the Earth,
Progressing yet returning,
Maintaining its path around but never toward,
The sun, its patient mate,
The infernal burning heart of the sky.

From somewhere deep in the bordering woods,
The treefrog hears a voice in his likeness;
The dusk hides her, they have never met,
Yet he knows her well.
He has always known her.