Pat Winslow
Toads
Normally I’d laugh at three shuffling cowpats.
But the family who invaded our tent was terrified.
That morning, in flailing panic, they leapt
from bag to bag and took cover under clothes.
They disappeared beneath the groundsheet
and lost a baby in the grass.
There was something about their skin,
the thinness, that made me think of how
a hospital sounds at three a.m.,
the shim of steel, how we’re cut open
and stitched up again, how we grow old
and our hair turns to cobwebs.
There was something about their fallibility
that made me know myself better,
and now, when I turn over in the night
and my weight drags across my bones,
I feel the girth of me sag and stretch a little more.
It never was alien skin. Not quite.
Page(s) 31
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