Frog Fire 2: The Final Friday Poem by John W. McEwers

Graffiti can be washed
with a pressure hose.
But how does one pressure wash a mind?
How does one spray away the smell?
Can you febreeze a memory?

My weekends now are not spent camping
I do not cook marshmallows

I'm in this bar
that grocery store
this club
that gym

I recall them as beings of soot and smoke.
When the night cleared
and we packed our tents
stepping barefoot on the morning dew,
the carcasses were scattered before us
round the fire pit,
the frogs' slimy bodies now twisted ash
an amphibian Pompeii.

To this day I cannot eat toast.

A burial was suggested at the time,
but we were too young for eulogies.

The crackling of their self immolation echoes today,
as does the tufts of smoke
as our feet crushed their delicate ashen form,
like souls rising
to the rapture.