The Frog Prince

She looked down into secret water.
Beneath archipelagos of lilies,
males clamped on doormat backs; a frenetic
globe of them vied for the female at their centre.
March became April. They wrinkled into
exhaustion, posing wide-legged beside
Atlantises of spawn… One day, a wild throw
stranded her golden ball on dankness.
A stone spoke from the grass with squat authority,
his words swimmingly fluent save for
those belches of marsh gas: he offered help.
A concertina-dive through rotting weeds
nudged the ball back to her feet on frilled ripples.
His gaze swivelled: he ventured to hope he might
burble gulch call on her? Noblesse oblige…
An endless white damask cloth; lit towers
brimming with tallow. Inside her goblet's shadow,
he was slime. Her tongue slid over silver
inlaid with ivory — no comfort there:
his bottom-of-the-pond eyes drank her in.
The others — worse if anything — gaped like
gargoyles, fingering their beards behind
greasy napkins… A bilious attack first,
the vapours, hysterics — she'd let them have it!
After, she lay in her locked room: her tears
neither wet nor dry; a seething emptiness.
A chance look found him poised on her slipper:
obsidian eyes gleamed from pale gold rims.
Her toes curled, her heart contracted;
she felt murderously afraid — so flung him,
a warty arrow, into the chandelier!
Those frozen forms were shattering, melting,
as she stood among tears of crystal and wept light.
There were no strong arms to hold her — though
from somewhere a princely voice, pellucid
as spring water, was offering, was offering —
she leant closer — what was it offering?