LANGUAGE OF THE FROGS

Tonight when the frogs are speaking their love language,
the forests still stand in all their giving,
I soak in the waters of loneliness
thinking my cradle never destined this,
not the loss of any children,
not the end of any love,
not for anyone
born to this earth-promised happiness
to lose it all,
but then, what did it damage
to lose everything,
maybe the heart,
or maybe not completely,
because I still love the fields of morning,
the brilliance of dew shed by night’s many skins,
the bird I watch in a nest of weather and horse hair
with her five speckled eggs,
and in the first smell of morning
when frogs praise the arrival of rain,
and tadpoles swim in the shrinking pond.
I step outside in all the sound
and step outside.

[from Dark. Sweet.—New & Selected Poems]

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From the publisher’s Web site:

A major American writer and the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award, Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, teacher, and activist who has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Colorado. Her fiction has garnered many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination and her poetry collections have received the American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. A volunteer and consultant for wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species programs, Hogan has also published essays with the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club.