The well frogs sing and glumly sit.
They live contented, darkly damp
Croaking praise to their well-top lamp
Viewing the world through a narrow hole
As short of sight as the earthy mole
Their minds grew narrow, lacking light
New and strange brought no delight.
A frog who knew the world beyond
Had fallen from a wind-touched frond
Plunging to eternal doom
Trapped within this narrow gloom
Her fate from many years before
Was now the stuff of froggy lore
The half-remembered truths she told
Into cosmic myths they'd mold.
And now the truth of primal frog
Was lost inside dogmatic fog
All frogs knew that far beyond
Lay the heavenly world of ... Pond.
Some said that on a still clear night
The sound of Pond you'd hear, you might.
But what all frogs knew for a fact:
The means to visit Pond they lacked.
The light and Pond were for the dead,
So the frog chant rightly said
Their fetid pit was life-long price
To spend forever somewhere nice
Down into the well flew flies
Who hummed in praise of wider skies
Who told of endless world, immense,
Bright and free - not darkly dense.
By night frogs sang of the hand on high
That sent down food from dark blue sky
They praised with all their visionless hearts
The power above their lowly parts.
Tales were told of the questioning few
Rumours spread from those who knew
Whispered quiet from mouth to ear
Tales the elders cursed with fear.
Those who asked too loud of light
Had eyes poked out to help their sight
Right thinking frogs had a single voice
'Better blind than make wrong choice.'
And daily came their feast of flies
Handed down from heavenly skies
The flies hummed tunes of open space
And frogs ate flies to show their grace.
Risking life and six-fold limb
To spread the word to the darkly dim
The flies gave all and set it naught
To save one frog in dogma caught
The flies knew how the world revolved
To rescue all the lost, resolved
By meteoric living, short
To those with minds, they amply taught.
Down below in their half-lit mirk
Each elder frog appeared to smirk.
While up above, flies hummed of Hell
And warned the world 'gainst the froggy well.
[Dedicated to fundamentalists of every shade].
