Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I'm glad to share my favorite pocket poem — though I confess, it's more a "put on your wall and make everyone read it there in the office while you watch" poem.

Some days, it really is everything, the wet green stalk of the field on the other side of the road. Would you risk everything to reach your wet green stalk? (I know how it sounds, people, but work with me!)

Small Frog Killed on the Highway

Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field
On the other side of the road.
They crouch there, too, faltering in terror
And take strange wing. Many
Of the dead never moved, but many
Of the dead are alive forever in the split second
Auto headlights more sudden
Than their drivers know.
The drivers burrow backward into dank pools
Where nothing begets
Nothing.

Across the road, tadpoles are dancing
On the quarter thumbnail
Of the moon. They can't see,
Not yet.

by James Wright
(courtesy Elite Skills Classics)