After a long search along the shore, I found the place of rest I encountered once before. At long last a pause hidden in the yellow green grass. In the center of the spring was a rusty pump. It was rusting away just as accretions of iron oxide and mold grew around it. It was the source of the salt lake and frogs leaped around it as I circumambulated. Most leapt into the pond, but a few leapt away into the grass. What mattered most was that they leapt out of my way. There are always contrarians, testing a different fate.
I had no chance to look closely at the frogs. They were so fast. And I couldn't catch a one of them, although I thought I was an expert frog catcher. They all went deep into the pond's green sedge, where they were still and all that moved were their thoughts of the above world from their below world. Their arched flight into the pond left an afterimage on my mind. One jumped into an old pipe and his leap echoed.
There were no ripples from the frogs jumping because there was so much algae. Their krrplnk sounded more like a thud each time. But there were light ripples from the wind on the surface. And the mesquite branches left shadows there too. Light itself is a shadow, Milton said, which flows or drifts from its source. We read, think, or speak of it through the arbitrariness of language or the flux of elements, one thing moving into another.
After a while I saw the frogs emerge from the spring pond, hungrily moving toward their prey. They looked outward from the pond, their heads just above the surface. They were wary panthers. A raccoon or snake would love this place. They are wary of me, looking right around the corner.
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