He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “Happily Never After (the Second Curse of the Horny Toad)” is perhaps my most mysterious poem, because it wrote itself and I didn’t know the surprise ending until the closing lines came to me “out of blue nothing” to quote my friend the Maltese poet Joe M. Ruggier. Also, the poem decided, without consulting me, to be a sonnet!”

The poem was originally published by Romantics Quarterly.

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 23 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 86 times by composers.

Illustration: RHL and ChatGPT