Tree Frog Ghazal

by Judith Kerman

In May at dusk, white voices solo
in the swamp, thimble-sized frog sopranos.

On the first warm day, we take off our shoes.
Warm mud lushes up between our toes.

The cat in my arms chirps his purr, kneads,
pushes at my face with his leather nose.

Spring peepers chorus in the night,
sleighbells across moonlit snow.

We stroll past the factory. Light streams out, the din
of machinery tended by bleary men. Hot iron glows.

On the picket line, the men shouting
at young women wear lapel pins with 5 tiny toes.

How ignorant we are! I read, you study.
The world goes on beyond what anyone knows.

Crickets, caroling twists of wire, skitter
under dry leaves near the green tomatoes.

Frog larvae swimming in rain water
in the crotches of trees grow legs, then feet, then toes.

Judy, you say, come to bed.
We hold each other. The spinning earth slows.

Back to 2005 Ghazals, Set Four

Editor's Comments

This ghazal conveys a strong sense of particular time and place; the tree frog's song summons the mud, the warmth, the cat, the lushness of spring . . . and also the lovers walking, the picketers who in their fervency are blind to the multitude of toes of creatures other than human.

Tree frogs, cats, frogs have toes (do crickets have toes?); beyond toed creatures, there is wire, dry leaves, green tomatoes, larvae, a continuum--a spectrum of beings.

What strikes me most in this ghazal is that it raises issues--the shouts of the demonstrators over-whelming the tree frog's song--but doesn't stick a sharp point into the reader. Instead, the poem rises to a sense of our larger context and an awareness of humans' ultimate ignorance: "The world goes on beyond what anyone knows." Indeed it does, but how often do any of us know that?

The last couplet brings us to the core of life: love, acceptance, comfort.

On the technical side, Judy has used qafia without a radif. Her ghazal is a good example of this possibility for the English ghazal. More and more, I think that, as there are several sonnet forms, so there will turn out to be several ghazal forms in English. You will find most of the possibilities exemplified on The Ghazal Page. And I hope you will experiment with them and send me the results.