Water Music
At the end of the way where salt meadow meets sweet marsh a strange whirring. A deep, long note and its overtone sounded together, like the singers of Tuva. Like the chanting of Tibetan monks. Over and over and over it comes from every quadrant of the vernal pool, ringing. Transient by definition. Urgent by design. The Fowler’s toads are courting. It is their love-song.
These are the toads of the shoreline. Common here, elsewhere not, like others of their kind they live their lives on land, defenseless. As much as they can they blend with sand and stone, leaves and lichens. But they are born in water and to water must return to breed and lay their eggs for the sake of their Kind. The water must be fresh, it must be shallow, the coupling rhymed to warmth and length of day in season and most of all to rain. Before the pool dries all must be completed. Before the season turns too hot the eggs must be safely hatched and away. Who can fault the frenzy? The arrivals and departures, the cries and the coupling are all at the risk of life.
When the toad sings, his spotted throat pulsing, the water drums to the sound. Little waves reach out from where he sits to every shore of that nuptial puddle. The female of the species feels as much as hears him, irresistible. We might call it a chorus, all these male strong voices, but it is not. Each work is an Aria and every man among them sings for himself alone. It seems like pandemonium but to the toad it is perfect timing with each entrée begun in the miniscule pauses between the other’s notes so that everyone has an equal chance to be heard. How the choice is made is mysterious. For each of the women in the audience one above all others is most melodious, for now.
More Jules et Jim than On Golden Pond, neither long life nor faithfulness is in the cards. Just look at those lips! Plenty of Jeanne Moreau’s to go around (which does nothing to lessen the competition). As soon as they finish with one love they start looking for the next, and with such desperate ardor.
The hour too is a fleeting magic. If you stood on the horizon you could touch the sun. Toadsong continues from the aquatic into the encompassing night, through the petals which are clouds, onward to the edges where the balloon-thin skim of atmosphere which enfolds us is little more than molecules and light, and from there carried on the Solar Wind and finally out, beyond the Oort, into the Cosmic Hum the Om the One. We hear it in our deepest sleep and wonder, “What other consciousness lives wakeful in this vast and endless dark?”
(C) 2008 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved
