Spring Rain Sauna Poem by Chi

The evening settles in
with a warm spring drizzle
that washes through the skies,
the trees and the earth.

There's nowhere than the gravel road,
for the toads from the nearby lake
to bask under the warm rainy weather,
to show their thin-skin coats,
engage intimate romance
so at the tail end of the day,
they can satiate a season's urge.

And so the males leap
out of the pond's undergrowth,
onto the warm gravel road,
their hairy ampits itching for rain salt
as they look for mounted areas
to ensconce themselves
for the spring suana...

Approaching headlamps
from another world flash into their eyes,
SUVs that speed like
blind monsters which won't slow down
their own itching rage till they
gasp at their journey's end.

But the toads sit tight and indifferent -
they would rather stare at the oncomers
with disdainfully bulging eyes.
And even so, the thralls
of the warm evening shower
is too great to make them bulge.

They will not respond when I skirt
through their lot, keeping them
underneath the car,
between the wheels as I go past.

They are blind to dying:
and except for the snake,
the eternal enemy, nothing shakes them
in the image of death.

Not particularly when they are caught
in the heat of spring's passionate carousals,
when the steamy lakeside rain
opens up their skin pores

for them to refill the winter's hunger
this time - in self abandon -
with a frothing palate of heavenly juices.