Paper Crane

Bullets born from our sorrowful tears, cold as ice and clear as crystal Fire through the dense barricade of the emerald-green, leave-covered, tree-filled canopy As an electrified bolt of lightning fires through the skies Exploding on impact into the uncultivated mangroves entrusted to the surreptitious, clandestine surroundings Of Dreamland’s Hollow drowning into the void filled with the burning twilight Just before the blinding burst of light accompanying the break of dawn The fog rolls over turning the frogs of our rainforest over to the cold, caressing grasp of sleep. Morning greets dawn the war is over. Sunshine streams through the golden-lit branches as early-morning dew drips off the soft, petals of the flowers abloom Frogs dart back and forth, dazzling in a billion, blindingly beautiful hues Gold and strawberry red, pink and blue. Earth’s little treasure trove abounds with delightful little frog creatures. With over 4,000 types there’s a frog for everyone. With big, brown, shoe-button eyes and adorable little webbed feet. Modeling the cutest potbellies so big, white and round. Nature’s cutest amphibians are perfect all-around. With so many different varieties Some of them climbed the trees in stealth, trees with bark as black as ebony and leaves glistening like emeralds The rest danced in whirls of water Splashing into the pond with resounding circles of water Like skipping stones bouncing onto the currents of a hollow river. Pretty-little-princess frogs dote on Lilly-pads Batting their big, shoe button eyes behind the love struck flowers smitten with Cupid’s arrow. The rest burrow into the ground in places where the sky’s tears cannot meet the thirst of their, poor, parched throats. Helen’s flying frog complete in dancing colors of green and gold Glides swiftly with embracing caress into the early-morning breeze. The Brazilian horned frog Bellows a chorus of a thousand trumpets To attract his lovely, little Frog Bride. Everything was perfect All were happy Nature’s little treasure trove and all the frogs and amphibians flew with the wind swam in the ponds hopped amongst the Lilly pads climbed the trees mated and married thrust their tongues out and caught crunch, zesty flies and roaches All was well until the humans came Cutting down the rainforests Polluting the air Killing the frogs just to eat their legs And selling them away as pets to live the rest of their lives as domestic prisoners Caged up in glass where the sun doesn’t shine and the rain doesn’t fall with a metal bowl sprinkled with dried flies They’ll never get to see their parents or have the girlfriend they once desired They’ll never get to enjoy the thrill of the hunt and catch their own food or play with their friends Never splash in a pond nor fly in the wind They ate the mosquitos that bit us dear And snatched up the roaches that repulsed us queer. They killed off our pests and delighted our kids Beautified our gardens and livened our homes singing music to our ears in delightful little chirrups But how did we repay them? We tore down the rainforests Stole their homes Cut down their trees Poisoned their air and polluted their ponds We cut off their legs and ate them as food Kidnapped their beloved girlfriends and cut them open in our little lab experiments But if things couldn’t get worse we took their kids to amuse our own and kept them in cages scaring them with cobras and starving them of hope. Now we might never get to see The Harlequin toad, so close to extinction complete in ebony-black and electrifying, shocking pink a mesmerizing sight for sore eyes and the tastiest eye candy any frog could offer. Nor will we ever see the golden dart frog so bright and joyous on such a rare occasion. It’s time to save the frogs The cruel, oppressed victims of our cruel ways And donate a little time and energy to fight for a cause that can’t fight for itself. Gone like a paper crane.