Month of Poetry, 2014: Spring Peepers

Spring Peepers

You would not believe
how loud it is
standing at the edge
of a wet-bottomed gravel pit
in the early dark of a late
April evening,
the sound of the frogs
so loud it almost hurts
your ears, so loud it
sounds like a siren,
high-pitched with that
round-and-round wavy
repeated pattern
like a fire truck.

You would not believe
that the creatures
that make that sound
are no bigger than
your thumb nail,
each one crying out
"Peep peep" in search
of love or sex or
immortality
and all added together
sounding like the end
of the world.

You would not believe
that after spending the winter
frozen in cold mud
this is what the male frog does,
wailing his siren song
into the spring night
like there's some kind
of emergency.
Which, I guess, there is.