Rain through the morning
and in the long pool a toad singing
happiness old as waterW S Merwin
By The Front Door
The Moon Before Morning
.
Around eleven, my ninety-year-old mother and I were winding down long conversation toward sleep when we found him — a toad, gleaming and unhurried, caught in the glow of her front door lantern, rain-jewelled and magnificently himself.
We stood on the threshold, she and I, and talked to him. And he received us. There are encounters that don’t announce their significance. They simply arrive — old as water, older than words — and restore something we hadn’t quite known was missing.
And my mother became 28 again, and I her curious, often delighted, little boy.
