The frogs are gone (ii)

from poet David A. Willson

Don’t strain your weak eyes looking

[The poet wore thick glasses.]

The frogs are gone from their bushes
The yellow lizards are watching
The bugs are there, creeping
The flies and ants and even the little birds
But those small green frogs are gone

[He later raised a field biologist.]

Maybe Mrs. Cuc ate them with rice
Maybe she sliced
Them up
Maybe something wild got them,
Although I don’t know what would eat them
Except Mrs. Cuc

[He was decent, polite, and respectful in a country way, as many Americans were in the occupation of the Republic of Viet Nam.]

Mrs. Cuc ate the big frog
That you found on the lawn
When you were mowing

[What did he do in the war? He mowed the lawn at Long Binh where he filed and typed for the Inspector General at United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam where fogging missions dumped their excess herbicide into the watershed on the way back to base.]

First she tied a string
To its left leg
And dragged it around
It squealed–

[He started out writing verse as many do who go on as he did to write prose. He continued to think of himself as a poet. Note the two short old action verbs and the final onomatopoeia.]

She knocked it on the head
And skinned it
Popped it in the pan
And fried it

[The stanza moves as deft and sure as the woman it describes.]

But Mrs. Cuc has been sick
Hasn’t been around lately

[Sick echoes Cuc.]

And besides, the frogs are damn small.
Skinned they’d provide less meat than all
The flesh under your thumb nails
Or the snails on the nearby wall.

[Small rhymes with all, not quite with nails and snails, then again with wall.]

The frogs could be out there right now
But as far as I know
They’re gone.

[The penultimate stanza begins by expanding within the title of the poem, also the first line of its first full stanza, to suggest possibility, before ultimate negation.]

The lizards chirp on
But the frogs are gone

[Fuck you, fuck-you lizards told the GIs all over Viet Nam. Some lizards some places. I can’t ask the poet if those at his office did, because the dioxin at Long Binh killed him in 2021. I have at moments thought that he had a good long run. Not nearly long enough.]

1 previous Viet Nam letter has addressed the poem, “The frogs are gone” by David A. Willson, on March 9, 2022.

That letter refers to a previous publication of the poem at Viet Nam Literature Project.

2 other Viet Nam letters address the poet, first on February 14, 2022, then again further on May 5, 2023.

The thumbnail photo above and below is the colophon of these Viet Nam letters. It shows me on the phone with the poet on a Veterans’ Day this century.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.