Fat-Lipped, You Formless

Fat-lipped, you formless scavenging
creature, murgling polliwog
munching the algae in my aquarium,
who would believe those skinny legs,
half-formed, would do for a frog?

Some see in that sucking mouth
progress, others a cyclical
moon and a sloughing off.
Tail cloudy as aspic,
tadpole, we dredged you

out with a net from the
cemetery pond. And the seepage
in low spots, the hollows condensing,
brooding you, thick as a root:
is there reason?

Strange how the breeding
goes on in the swamps; fine-legged teeming
in muck and in coffins, weeds
swarming with such events, even
our moist coupling part of it:

all flesh, cookie dough,
melting, concocting.
Comma, how your large head
bulges, trying and
trying to become a frog!