Spring Peepers
Martin Elster
Spring peepers trill and whistle in between
the avenue (where drivers rush toward shops),
construction site, the woods, the putting green.
No one stops to listen to these drops
of sentience small as buttercups and shrill
as piccolos. They hide amid the stalks
that rise up from a liquid eye as still
as a spyglass pointed at the equinox,
unblinking for eternity. The first
of April. The environs dance and ring
with notes from frogs who, though they’re unrehearsed,
belt out a song precisely tuned to spring.
These lusty soon-to-be inamoratos,
iconic crooning harbingers, will soon
be silent. You who ride inside your autos,
roll down the windows! Do not wait till June!
​
- - -
Previously published in The Centrifugal Eye
- - -
Fliss: Hello Marty, and welcome to Well Met! I'm delighted you agreed to join us on this metrical jaunt through Poetry World.
​
Marty: Hello Fliss, and many thanks for your warm welcome! I’m delighted to be able to participate in Well Met, and I look forward to reading all the contributors’ poems.
F: Hooray! Well, first, I have to congratulate you on placing this poem in The Centrifugal Eye. This publication has been on indefinite hiatus since 2016, but its guidelines are still on the Duotrope site and include, ‘Rhyming & formal poems must be polished and natural -- free verse has a better chance for acceptance, unless your traditional lyric forms show great maturity of craft.’ So your acceptance there was quite a feat!
M: Thanks, Fliss! I was pleased to have several of my poems published in The Centrifugal Eye, which was a high-quality and elegant publication. Besides online, they also had a print edition, which was beautiful. It’s too bad that it has remained on indefinite hiatus.
​
F: That really is a shame, I agree. Let’s take a look at ‘Spring Peepers’ now. Do you remember when you wrote the poem? And where, maybe?
​
M: Well, I’ve just looked at my computer files and saw that I wrote some early drafts in 2008. I often used to walk my dogs on golf courses. One of the courses has a pond not far from a busy street as well as near one of the putting greens. This pool, surrounded by cattails, is an ideal spot for spring peepers to gather as soon as the weather is warm enough and the winter snow has thawed. These frogs are so small, it’s virtually impossible to see them. Their voices, however, are amazingly loud and carry a long distance. I felt privileged to be able to hear the males’ high-pitched peeping calls (which, in chorus, resemble sleigh bells) and thought to myself: Not one of those thousands of people driving by in their cars has any inkling about the amazing mating ritual that’s taking place just twenty yards or so from the road!
​
F: Wow! Yes, I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of animal antics while out on walks, Marty. While copyediting for a safari company, I’ve learned that there’s an astonishing amount of wildlife to see when you’re on foot rather than in the 4 by 4. Plant life, insects, feathery friends as I call them, and of course the little amphibians as here. And a wide variety of sights and sounds, too.
​
M: No doubt you’ve learned a lot working for the safari company! There’s so much wildlife (fauna and flora) even in the city. Our feathered friends, especially, which I love hearing and seeing. Every spring, a pair of Canada geese hang out in my backyard, which has a small river flowing along the perimeter. The female has lately been sitting on her eggs in a nest across the river (at a spot where the river bends and rushes into a tunnel), while the male swims nearby (guarding her) or munches the grass. I’m pleased that you are also fond of frogs.
​​
F: Frogs are very cool! I like newts too, especially the ones that look like little dragons. Here in Pittville, we have a female swan, Maisie, sitting on a nest at the moment, I think. Her partner, George, is certainly doing a lot of guarding himself, wings arched, territorial. Well, let’s take a look at the meter now! I think I hear five feet, so pent, and a medley of iambs, trochees, anapaests, dactyls, a veritable pick-and-mix happening here. Is that about right, maybe?
​
M: You have a good ear, Fliss! My original idea was to make this a sonnet (but then I added two lines at the end), so it’s mostly iambic pentameter, yes, with a few substitutions sprinkled in such as double iamb, headless line (aka acephalous line), anapest, and trochee (though I don’t believe there are any dactyls in my poem). By the way, speaking of frogs, I also have a villanelle about how some species (e.g., the wood frog and the grey tree frog) “freeze” for the winter and thaw out in the spring, and a sonnet about the water-holding frog of Australia (which is a ground-dweller and undertakes aestivation).
​
F: I think I remember that villanelle, Marty, and maybe the sonnet too. By all means provide the links, and I’ll pop them in at the end here. And thanks for your notes on meter! I think I hear a dactyl at ‘belt out a’ (line 12), with the emphasis on ‘belt’, but perhaps it falls on ‘out’, so IP here too?
​​
M: I had a feeling you’d remember the villanelle! It’s called ‘The Art of Freezing’. It appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, which (I’m pleased to say) nominated it for the Pushcart Prize. Here’s the link! The water-holding frog poem is unpublished at this time.
Regarding ‘BELT out a’: I see what you mean about hearing a dactyl there! Of course, as you said, you could also accent ‘out’ (which would then make the 1st beat an iamb). Alternatively, you could think of the line starting with a trochee on the 1st beat (i.e., foot) and then an iamb on the 2nd beat: ‘BELT out / a SONG’. Scansion isn’t always so clear-cut!
​​
F: Yes, there’s often room for meter-manoeuvre, as here. Thanks for talking through those options, Marty, and also for providing information about the poems. Hearty congrats on your Pushcart Prize nomination, and best of luck with the water-holding frog!
​
M: Thanks for those great questions, Fliss. I had fun answering them. And thanks, also, for posting my poem on Well Met!
​​
F: You are welcome!
​​
- - -
Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra (now retired). Aside from playing and composing music, he finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and, most of all, writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. His honors include Rhymezone’s poetry contest (2016) co-winner, the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry Competition (2014) winner, the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest winner, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s poetry contest (2015) third place, a Best of the Net nomination, and five Pushcart nominations. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.
- - -
​​