THE 59 MILLIONTH FROG

We counted frogs
Like they were hopping out of fashion,.
I manned the abaci, you just strung along.
Your basic skills weren’t up to much.
You ate a few , though,
Whole.
Those plaguey frogs got everywhere.
The desert rocked.
The Nile turned green.
The Sphinx thought..
But who can know what the Sphinx thinks?
I thought she thought:
Holy Moses! There’s a whole lot of jumping going on.
Everywhere frogs were jumping
On saints and saints were jumping on frogs.

Mimi of the petticoats, bless her,
Stacked away skyhigh frog thighs
In the convent freezer.
Affaires sont les affaires, Toni!
The other girls just hopped about
Looking pretty.

Did we sleep?
Not a lot with all that hopping.
You lay there throbbing,
More pathetic than usual,
The frogs hurtling to and fro
Inside your belly and hurtling up and down
All over Egypt.
I did not understand
That the frogs had to alight somewhere
And again alight somewhere, and had to be kept moving,
And had to be rested
Temporarily somewhere.
Well, actually, Piggles,
I still don’t altogether
Understand.