I Will Be Grateful to Anyone Who Would Ask: "So, What Do You Think of Those Carolina Frogs?"

 

How to study harmony itself is for us
the perennial question itself (Phaedrus 268e).

 

Here beneath the pines
Seeded on the ancient dunes,
Reposed upon the shores
Of primeval seas, 

Stretching far inland
Toward blue-misted mountains,

Puny, black-masked Pseudacris ocularis,
The smallest of North America's frogs,
Begin to inundate
The Outer Coastal Plain

With swarming choruses
Of leaping voices.

They fit with ease
Upon one's fingertip,

Yet are quick to spring away.

Their mating call—
A pure tone
Followed by a train of pulses—

Resembles the crickets
Whom Socrates invoked
While teaching Phaedrus
Why one should love the Muses.

For that mimetic chirp
The little frog even bears
Its distinguished Latin name.

And to me—
Like Socrates' cicadas—

These amphibian hosts
Surely fill the role
Of Platonic messengers,

Secret emissaries
In the clandestine employ
Of Mnemosyne's daughters,

Reporting to each Muse
How well—or poorly—
Whether knowingly or unwittingly,

Each of us
Has honored her
Throughout the day.

For who knows
Whether these pseudo-cicadas,

Left behind
By the long-receded sea,

Were not once human,
Like Socrates’ own dog-day singers
(Phaedrus 259b),

Or whether
Their panoramic vigil

Is not itself
Their apprenticeship

For the day
They become human,

As they hop
From element to element,

Ascending
The ladder of being,

Yet never forgetting
How small they once were—

And therefore,
Unlike us,

Always remembering
How puny the ego is
Beside the soul.