A Slow Boil
by Brianne Kreppein

Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ
The chorus of the frogs is Greek to me,
and just like Aristophanes
frogs are about to be
unrecognizable by all but
those well-learned
with an amphibian specialty.

Pathogenic chytrid fungus
is among us, specifically
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
spreading its plague like this
because humanity explores, expands,
tracking other lands,
back home with us.

Taydactylus diurnus
Taudactylus acutirostris
In our selfishness,
we’ve perpetrated,
or at least participated,
in the eradication
of their kind.

El Sapo de Oro
is a former
citizen of the cloud forest.
A toad, but tied,
to the same fate
as so many frogs of late,
missing and presumed dead.

Two-hundred-and-sixty-five million years,
at least since the early Triassic,
frogs have been populating
and procreating, but now
ten-thousand times faster
than other organisms meeting disaster,
they are going extinct

while I watch Netflix with my lights on, heater whirring,
worrying about how much cash I’ve been burning,
and I didn’t even know.

 

 

*The author strongly recommends reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert.