Conchobar

The Pond of Eden

I think this great pond has always been here
Before time began and year after year.
It has lasted longer than all we know
In the driest drought and the coldest snow.
Great animals appeared then went away,
Tall scaly beasts, then furry ones held sway.
My grandfather told his who then told me
That the first of our kind came from the sea.

In the great blue sea that we see above
Swims the Lord Creator who by his love
Made us in his image, the perfect Frog.
To swim through the water in the World Bog,
Lord Frog made us legs with four paddled feet.
The long sticky tongue by which we all eat
Was made by Lord Frog so we could supply
Our needs of moth, gnat, midge, and dragonfly.

Frog Scripture says that our Lord made dry land
Red hot and swirling it did so expand.
He sent down cool water from the great sky sea
That sizzled and boiled �till cool it would be.
Then the pond did form in this holy place
Where Lord Frog�s bounty would sustain our race.
He made the first frog with a magic wish
By blowing air in the lungs of a fish.

Primus Rana, the father frog of all
Ate the bug of knowledge causing his fall.
Lord Frog was angry at this show of pride
But nowhere in the pond could Primus hide.
�I will not let you leave the primal pond.
Salamanders will walk to the land beyond.
You must forever lay eggs in the marsh
Where your young must flee predators most harsh.�

Newts to reptiles to dinosaurs to birds
Reptiles to mammals to Elephant herds
Mammals to primates to Apes and to men
Will thrive then perish in waves until then
Only Frogs are left to frolick in the fen.
Frogs thrived all along in our watery pen
Eating mosquitoes, gnats, flies, as before.
Men ruled a while but now they are no more.

Lord Frog put us in the fen to abound.
Extinction to extinction, still around
Are the frogs and salamanders of old
Unchanged by time a design that would hold.
Three hundred million years frogs have prevailed
But dinosaurs, mammoths, and men have failed.
The Frog Creator makes no sense to me
And I have no faith in a blue Sky Sea.

Infidel, I�m called for doubting the way
The sacred scriptures infallibly say
The Frog Creator�s word conjured the Earth.
I was told the story of its fabulous birth
And of the many animals he made
Coming and going in a long parade.
The first frog, Primus, and the bug he ate
Made frogs remain frogs forever to date.

Frogs are the evolutionary links
From creeping gilled fish to scampering skinks.
To breathe in water our larvae have gills
Then grow lungs and legs to reach for the hills
To fields and woods they breathe air as they hop.
Summer will pass as they eat, grow, and stop,
To leap back to mud in the pond they know
To dig deep then sleep through the winter snow.

Suppose the frogs has evolved, what a mess
It could have been to monkey with success.
Would a biped frog chip stones into tools?
Would President Frog have a staff of fools?
A frog would not lie, nor desert his pond
When the cold winds blow from far lands beyond.
But evolution favoured the frog�s plan.
Frogs remained frogs, they refused to be man.

W. D. McPherson � (aka Conchobar)