The Pleasures of: Episode 9

Frogs!

Because I think that you already know. And it isn't the reality so much: If I could I would spend my days sitting on a lily pad with a floppy brown hat and a red fishing pole, a fly tied to the end, catching fish until the end of my days, hopping and leaping when I wanted to get about.

And then here is this thing that I wrote perhaps five years ago:

Well If I was a tortoise then I guess I'd go swimming
Down the little lake where the little lilies grow
And if they grow there on lily pads where frogs sit a'fishing
With red fishing poles and always tell you "Good morning;"

Well if all that were true then I guess
I'd go down to the bank and
Bury me deep in the reeds and the mud,
Where all the little earthworms always tell me
"Good morning."

It was a poem at the time, and it was written under these conditions:

We were at a writers' retreat. It was the third night, and every night there somebody had taken it upon themselves to write a sex poem about someone else in the room, which they would then read to the group (as every evening we had a reading). A girl named Amanda had the night before read one about me which was basically a play-by-play description/how-to guide. That third night I said to the people, "In keeping with the theme, I have decided to write a poem of my own, which I call 'To Amanda.'"

Did anybody get it? I don't know, but there they all Frogs are, all on their lily pads, all a'fishing.