Froggy

First impressions of fatherhood.

FROGGY


It’s a froggy, makes the noise.
         Plastic froggy, plastic eyes that goggle out
Toggle eyes that cue the music noise
         That’s all the rage with little girls, little boys
Between the ages of Just-Out-Into-The-Air
         And seven months or thereabouts
When they take on their first air of sophisti-ca-ti-on.


My jaded ears and jaded eyes took in that froggy and its noise
         and smirked, at first, at its innocent air.
I’ve been removed from infant children,
                and their props and plastic playthings
For twenty tough and tumultuous years.


Its song is just a Thing Insipid,
         “deedle-Sproing Sproing Sproing!”
And goes on in its kinder-cadence
         “Deedle-boing!  Deedle boing!”


But when the crucial time presented,
         With Daughter’s crying unrelenting,
In the car with air condish’ning,
         Wishing (as my wife was wishing)
For panacea past our grasping,
         Relief from desperate infant rasping,
That froggish knight in shining armor
         Carried off our whining daughter
To sleep and soothed three sorely tired souls.