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 MANOh, croaking bloke beneath the moon so like a toad, it makes me swoon whence “ChirRUP!” rises like balloon which euphony just fills me with delightBeneath my window every evening, the dish of night’s picante seasoning, the soft “ChirRUP!” I find so pleasing commencing ‘pon the coming of the nightPlacidly 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!NOTE: The poet wishes it to be known that he had wanted to add more references to food, but unfortunately the muse had departed. Mike Kupietz , a reluctant scion of the postmodern age, is larger on the inside than the outside: perhaps not a composer, but a producer and arranger of sounds; nor a writer, but an avid writer-down; an occasional author of doggerel; an erstwhile urban hermit; and privately a man of very great ardor. He is, if now resigned to never succeeding at those personal and artistic pursuits he holds most dear, unwavering in his determination to fail at them as entertainingly as possible. He is currently in what he calls the "red bathrobe period" of his life. If you're wondering what all this has to do with FileMaker development or IT consulting: you done taken the wrong turn, this river don't go to Aintry—Mike's professional services are on his San Francisco FileMaker Pro consulting website. View All PostsPost navigationPrevious Post Report On My WeekendNext PostThe Most Evil Words