Myth of Arrival

The space to be at peace with oneself comes in different forms. Today I am happily studying my amphibians. Omakakii is the Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) word for frog. I am not yet at a point where I can construct anything more than baby-talk sentences (and I have my doubts with that), but I think a simple sentence like, “I see a frog,” would go: “Omakakii waakaa'igan.” (lit.: A frog. I see it.)

Frogs make me sad; especially now as spring time rolls around and I can hear them peeping and hooting in the darkness. Maybe not all frogs have an air of melancholy to them, singing about all they have lost, but I know if I were a frog that’s what I would sing about. Perhaps little omakakiig (frogs, plural) are the souls of dead poets? It must be a downhearted feeling to sing so loud and only have the big, dark night sky answer as a reply.

Last, it is a spring night, notes plucked alive
from still violent heartbeats and frog's mimicked
crippled cries. Yes, there is bee and beehive,
perhaps, cricket and pond, in that perfect
tune, but the deep colors? Water-green picked
from the lily? Sand-red from a young oak's
bark? Blue stolen from a beach stone licked
by the far sea? Those are the moans and croaks
only a frog can give. A wetlands accent.
Tadpole's sorrow. The bullfrog's perverted
caterwaul is the mournful ho-ho June
and May bring us. Why bother with torment
when frogs are weeping? Frogs, little squalid
things, love only this: our missing dark moon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Original Poetry, Anishinaabemowin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.