Poem-A-Day: Toad by Diane Seuss

November 19, 2013 Toad by Diane Seuss The grief, when I finally contacted it  decades later, was black, tarry, hot,  like the yarrow-edged side roads  we walked barefoot in the summer.    Sometimes we'd come upon a toad  flattened by a car tire, pressed into  the softened pitch, its arms spread out  a little like Jesus, and it was now    part of the surface of the road, part  of the road's story. Then there was  the live toad I discovered under  the poison leaves of the rhubarb,    hiding there among the ruby stems,  and if you ate those stems raw,  enough of them, you'd shit yourself  for days. It isn't easy to catch a living    thing and hold it until it pees on you  in fear. Its skin was the dull brown  of my father's clothes, my grandfather's  clothes as he stood behind the barber's    chair, clipping sideburns, laying a warm  heap of shaving cream over a bristly chin,  sharpening his straight razor and swiping it  over the foam-covered cheek of my father,    who often shaved twice a day, his beard  was so obstinate, even in the hospital bed.  When I laid a last kiss on his young cheek,  the scraping hurt my lips. Do you ever    wonder, in your heart of hearts,  if God loves you, if the angels love you,  scowling, holding their fiery swords,  radiating green light? If your father    loved you, if he had room to love you,  given his poverty and suffering, or if  a coldness had set in, a cold-bloodedness,  like Keats at the end, wanting a transfusion    of the reader's life blood so he could live  again. Either way, they're all safely  underground, their gentleness or ferocity,  their numb love, and my father's    tar-colored hair, and the fibers of his good  suit softened by wood tannins,  and grandfather's glass eye with its  painted-on mud-colored iris,    maybe all that's left of him in that walnut  box, and Keats and his soft brown clothes,  and the poets before and after him.  But their four-toed emissary sits    in my hand. I feel the quickening pulse  through its underbelly. Hooded eyes,  molasses-tinged, unexpressive,  the seam of its mouth glued shut.     Copyright © 2013 by Diane Seuss. Used with permission of the author.   About This Poem "The poem began with a toad. It had been a long time since I'd seen one. Maybe my life had gone in another direction. I followed it deep, into grief and some cold-blooded questions. The poem ends with the same toad."   --Diane Seuss Most Recent Book by Seuss Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010)            Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.   Diane Seuss is the author of Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010). Her new book Four-Legged Girl is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2015. She is a Writer in Residence at Kalamazoo College.   Related Poems The Dusk of Horses by James Dickey Whose Mouth Do I Speak With by Suzanne Rancourt Gila by Rigoberto González __________________________ Rae Armantrout is the judge for the 2014 Walt Whitman first book award. Submit your manuscript online. Deadline: December 1.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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