The tree frog’s two syllables rising from night trees sound exactly like a plea, or like a final question: is it is it is it, and it means oh what a night we inhabit together, hanging our songs out in the cool air like blessings on the doorframe.
Until I found my life there, I was afraid of the dark. Until it had hidden me from grave danger, I didn’t know how close the embrace of night in all its splendor through which I could hear voices and footsteps but was never seen.
So now I haunt my own backyard in the pitch dark, only a neighbor’s small light across the way. I am looking for something that isn’t there.