The tadpoles watched the wrinkled frog inflate his cheeks
and nudged each other's slimy joints with wet webbed fins
and flicking tongues. The tailless ass, they said, and smirked.
He blathered on with bulbed unblinking eyes, a blob
of sagging jowls, admonishing the youth to look
both left and right before they hopped, A hop before
a tread spells doom, he wheezed, and all the tadpoles belched,
as tadpoles do, and left him on his rock to bake
in dread. Cold weeks were melted into lengthened day,
while rain fell soft and glistened on the lane beside
the lake. The tadpoles stretched their new-grown legs in strength
and courage, eager to explore, the scent of life
beyond the weeds a pull too strong to fail to heed.
The old frog's remonstrations rose like vapour clouds
when sunken rocks emerge to face the sun. Alas!
Dehydrated facsimiles of frogs, you learn
too late no better time to spring than spring, but best
to wait.

NaPoWriMo 2005, April 10