Fetid, fecund soup,
thick with the spit of rotted ice,
this density i pass through
leaving no sign if i'm pious,
not even a name in my tongue
quickly forgotten in a thousand short cycles
of melt and spawn and hatch and tails and frogs and ice again,
i sit beside it while i can,
turn my face to the higher sun
and listen to legs sprout in the slime,
the water snake feast in the reeds.
—with a line from Shirley Kaufman, 1923-2016
