by Cecil Morris
 |
Portland’s ‘frog taxi’ offers a life-saving lift to a struggling species. Volunteers shuttle Northern red-legged frogs across U.S. Highway 30 to prevent real-life Frogger. —OPB News, November 23, 2024 |
A little morning news that made me smile:
In Oregon, the Harborton frog shuttle,
a handful of concerned amateurs,
a collection of volunteers, patrol,
through November chill, at night in the rain,
to gather spawning Northern red-legged frogs
and transport them, free of charge, across blur
of traffic on U. S. Highway 30,
thus preventing a slaughter of innocents.
Let me be like those people, tender-hearted
and kind and brave and willing to protect
the ones who, alone, cannot save themselves.
Let me join the flotilla of volunteers
who come out in dark of difficult times
to ferry those in need back to safety.
In Oregon, the Harborton frog shuttle,
a handful of concerned amateurs,
a collection of volunteers, patrol,
through November chill, at night in the rain,
to gather spawning Northern red-legged frogs
and transport them, free of charge, across blur
of traffic on U. S. Highway 30,
thus preventing a slaughter of innocents.
Let me be like those people, tender-hearted
and kind and brave and willing to protect
the ones who, alone, cannot save themselves.
Let me join the flotilla of volunteers
who come out in dark of difficult times
to ferry those in need back to safety.
Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. He and his partner, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.