Today we return to the ditch we visited last week with several suggestions from my readers about what to call it. The one that sounds the most like what I might have called it back in the days of my life where its treasure first appeared was “crick.” Now if you look that word up, you will find it has to do with pain, usually in the neck, and I have had my share of those. However, for this purpose, it is a frequently heard Appalachian pronunciation for “creek.”
As spring came on, in a sheltered nook in the eddying water, I noticed what looked like a bunch of commas twisting hither and yon. The commas took me back to remembered creeks and small ponds of my childhood and the fun of catching tadpoles. Of course, we did “catch and release” even before that was a term, but many happy hours were spend watching the little critters (matching word to crick) whisking back and forth in the shallow water. Now I would get to do this all over again.
Well, not exactly. I haven’t done any “catch and release.” It’s a steep bank, and my knees aren’t quite what they used to be, but part of my walk regimen every day is a stop by the crick to see the progress of the polliwogs. They grow slowly, but they’ve grown from commas into small black peas – not all that big but several multiples of their beginning with proportionally smaller tails. The last few nights have me wondering just how successful I want them to be in maturing into croaking frogs since I already have a pretty loud male chorus of their fathers and uncles at night when my windows are open.
In any case, this is my ode to the creatures.
In a boggy haven
nestle the polliwogs
turning tails to legs.
Beneath the drain, tadpoles
grow into singing frogs.