Poet Warrior

by Joy Harjo

FROG IN A DRY RIVER When you talk with the dead You can only go as far as the edge of the bank. I heard more than one frog singing. She came to me more than once in dead Sleep. We used to drink, and she doesn’t want anyone to tell. I met the king of the frogs once perched on the lip of the ditch. The water had been let down for the summer for the crops And we camped out nearby, with singers, the ones who knew The oldest songs. Said the frog as he pitched his favorite pillow behind his Aching back It’s hard getting old, and soon we will all be dead. He sang as we sat together and watched The human traffic hiking by. The jealousy beast lives too among us frogs, he mused. I watched it going across in a yellow boat, toward the Land of the dead. It had six rowers to haul the sharp-tongued. We are never free of ourselves, not here or in froggy heaven. Then the river spoke up. She’d had enough of the disregard, The theft. I’m not dead, she said. I wanted to learn a song from the frog. The frog leaped in, and My mind followed. I started this poem. To argue with the living is hard enough, forget the dead. I will end here, instead.