When Love’s Away Madrigal

Small toad, green as salt-
scoured aspirin bottle seaglass,
no larger than a thumb,
what about the ecosystem

of my kitchen sink struck
you as fossorial or aquatic,
gripping the faucet’s crozier,
all short, squat skull, all burr

& bulbous, lidded eyes
that when mature will cry?
I too feel born from a shell-less
mass of doll’s-eye eggs, amphi-bios,

“both kinds of life,” respiring
through panting skin, lungless, longing.