To replace you with night

 

A dog eats a frog with gusto

eats the sun if it can bear it

and makes cuckoo chicks bark

a puppy finds eggs up under the ceiling

it eats the frog's leftover flippers

with more than twenty twelve claws

and therefore it jumps

like this

to replace you with night.

 

The light sleep plays off the mules

can you hear the frog barking

out in the swamp's redwood dry cleaners

out in the plowed field

the frog eats its tail appendage

where seven rivers meet

to chew redwood leaves

to replace you with night

to replace you with night

to replace you with night.

 

But the leaves are rarely completely red

and the smoke swirls aren't that red at all either

oh, oh, oh, spirits roam

to chew on redwood leaves

where seven rivers meet

the frog eats its tail appendage

and replaces you with night

and replaces you with night

and replaces you with night

and replaces you with night.