On a long-ago visit to the hamlet of Acton, MA with my GOAT (that’s “Girlfriend Onceupon A Time”—hey, I don’t mind if they call me a BOAT), the town was infested with the loudest toads I’d ever heard, so loud I initially took them to be someone hiding outside our window playing a prank. I became enamored of the idea that someone might be prowling the countryside, hiding outside people’s windows just to provide this bucolic ambiance. I contemplated this idea for a solid fifteen years until, in a moment of inspiration, this bit of doggerel spontaneously emerged.
Universally condemned among my friends as not especially good, it nonetheless remains one of my personal favorites.
ODE TO A CROAKING MAN
Oh, croaking bloke beneath the moon
so like a toad, it makes me swoon
whence “ChirRUP!” rises like balloon
which euphony just fills me with delight
Beneath my window every evening,
the dish of night’s picante seasoning,
the soft “ChirRUP!” I find so pleasing
commencing ‘pon the coming of the night
Placidly it comes, the presence—
with the evening’s supple pleasance—
a “ChirRUP!”, mellow beyond measance,
from someone ‘neath my window, out of sight.
I know of those whose souls are burdened
who’re prone to start and feel consterdened
when bloke near window they have heardened
but I’ve no need for being so uptight.
For tender is the twilight mood
whence blissful metaphors of food
from placid “ChirRUP!” are construed.
Such beauty, I donut connect with fright.
Tho’ others shoo him from their windows
I hope wherever I go, him goes
whose “chirRUP!” fills me like pimentos;
the sausage in my jumbalaya of night!
