The Frog

by practicalspactical

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw God in the form of a frog hovering over the corner of my bed when I was a child, halfway between waking and sleep?

I am now a child of nine and twenty years; days have passed, a myriad; each like a mayfly, born with the sun, and coming to a full flowering, before it dies in fire with my daily continuity;

Still, I still possess the well worn pathways of the old gray matter. I still can journey back there, to the light of other days; I still can see the old room, still can see my old young body, still can see those young small hands, my soft young parents, beautiful in their youth, in the fulsome springtime noontime of their days, when Ronald Reagan was President, when spaceships went to heaven, when a strange cold empire ruled half the world in the name of equality even as it stamped out and snuffed out freedom —

And there I was, a child of America, of the 20th Century, of America’s triumph, of freedom’s promise, of the perfect coming day, the resolution of troubles — the 80s —

And I do not know when it was, or how, though I think it must have been sometime around when Sarah was born, which would have been somewhere right around Day 1000 — but yes, halfway between waking and sleep, in my old room, my first room, on the side of the house, facing west, always facing west, with my bed and my books (same room still, same room still) — and in the corner, halfway between waking and sleep, God was, suspended, in the form of a frog, with a beard, and I laughed, like Sarah, to see it —

A universe of days have passed since then, and I no longer believe in a God that thinks or feels or cares or any of that — and sometimes I don’t believe in anything other than the dull matter and the dull rocks and the strange math equations that brought us to this perfect day —

But I was young once, golden once, and so were you, and the God suspended in the air — but really in my eye — watched over me then, and maybe, underneath the ruins and debris of the living in this world — he watches still —

Speak, you integrated man, and be less integrated, and remember the Watcher, who cares, who loves, who witnesses.

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