Froggos, Froggone
Shui Hau
Tonight you're not dried and flat,
blending into the road.
You croak like no one's watching,
loud, multiple—
among you, there's this ridiculous laughter,
surround sound of abracadabra, abracadabra,
distinct, almost like a mockery
to the itchy fact
that our blood is your food's food
by the thick, green soup
of your lotus leaves and children,
some of which will never grow.
We thought you were extinct
and how the hell did you return—
Our flashlight gives no answer
but to reveal
you, stoic, resting on bark
or under a big grass blade;
you, so many of you
looking out from drain pipes:
or swept into a gutter
higher than you could leap—
so we cup our hands to take you
back to the wet bush,
by which you freeze,
unblinking, as if
making sense
of the tunnelling, of gods' hands
before you turn left then right
then spring out of sight.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2023. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2023 was Aoife Lyall.
Editor’s Comments:
Nature finds a way and, despite how eager we are to see ourselves as the magnanimous custodians of the planet, we more often hinder than help it progress. When these frogs “croak like no one’s watching” we are left to wonder if they are being incautious or defiant. The speaker’s response to the deep croaking of the frogs is to understand it “almost like a mockery / to the itchy fact / that our blood is your food’s food”. The frogs, then, have no great opinion of these strange creatures staring at them. The final stanza brings home how important we want to make ourselves, the speaker granting themselves “gods’ hands” from the frog’s perspective, who does nothing more to acknowledge this divine interruption than “to spring out of sight.”
Author’s Comments:
I wrote the poem when I studied in Scotland, looking back at a frog-watching experience I had in Hong Kong. I grew up in an urban, overworked, working-class, migrant household so I never got to visit natural places. When I had a chance to explore with my co-workers, I was cautiously intrigued by the interconnectedness between living things.
I seldom wrote happy and non-political things before the poem. Being away from home and exposed to poets who loved animals changed my way of thinking. I remember submitting this poem to a workshop, where Dr. Miriam Gamble asked if it was a political allegory. I did not understand that comment until recently. Minoritised groups struggle with visibility: we are visible in suffering, invisible when it comes to decision-making processes. What does it mean when we are seen? Whose agency does our visibility restore? When will no news really be good news?
