Peace Frog

May 20, 2026

Still no rain, though a pittance is promised for tonight.

My bear videos are getting hundreds of views.

Peace Frog reading last night at Dimension of Books in Waynesville, on a genrtrifying street facing a mountain. Big handsome Doug opened the store a few months ago. He looks like a TV sports reporter, as I think he was for a while. We’re from the same part of Ohio, which I knew from his lack-of-accent accent. Used books, all dusty, some quite esoteric. Doug seems deeply happy, and this little store his dream. I hope all goes well for him forever. If I had known exactly what the event was, I would probably have refused, but I went and it is well. Ten or twelve people in a tiny, tiny rooms, sweating like stevedores. What an odd thing poetry is. Unlike in almost any other art form, amateurism is not only tolerated, but encouraged as, somehow, genuine. Amid that I was a white flame. They acclaimed me a great poet, and whether that is true or not, I changed the perspective of the room. One woman said that I was either a great poet or a great performer, and she didn’t know which. Imagine saying that to Mozart. Poets who are not good performers should not perform, but rely on their readers. My life has been poetry, yet even I roll my eyes when required to go to a reading, knowing how unlikely it is to be excellent. 

The breaking light revealed that the bears returned, and this time destroyed everything. They ripped a hole in the fabric of the pond and drained much of the water. They scooped out the water plants and left them torn on land. They broke my one remaining pear tree and toppled the lawn statuary that I had righted yesterday. This is the end of that joy. The pond is too much of a temptation to wild animals who have grown far too bold. I had it for ten years, and perhaps that is enough. But, sad. I think of the calling of frogs, the birds slaking their thirst, the occasional heron, the lilies like gems flowering in the shadows.