There’s a rain barrel
outside under our bedroom window.
This time of year, there’s a frog

clinging to its edge hollering out every night.
I can’t remember the first year we noticed it,
but it’s become one of those things I expect.

A phenological constant in mid-June,
and although I know it’s not the same frog
from years past, it carries that same sound

echoing into the barrel and out across the
yard yearning for a lover to fulfill its destiny,
to pass down those genes bringing

babies back here to holler some more.
It’s a dollop of wonder in this big ole
mess of a world, one of those things

making me hold on to notions that
maybe everything will be okay.