Lil Greenie

There are so many bodies
between a frog
and its grandfather
they may not know each other
when they meet.

Think of a full pond
of offspring and grand-offspring,
how many eggs, how many tadpoles…
Gramps and Lil Greenie
easily may see each other,
croak back and forth
with no awareness
of genetics held in common.

Lil Greenie grows up
swiftly, turns out pretty 
ordinary.  One day someone
sketches him badly and 
eventually the drawing makes him
famous under a new name — they
call him “Pepe.”

He gets taken
all the wrong ways to all
the best places by some very 
fine bastards indeed. Frogs being
what they are he doesn’t care
as long as he gets fed. They put
bloody words in his mouth and slivers
of ice under his skin and he
burps out this is fine thank you
whenever he gets a chance to speak.

If you ask him what his grandfather
or great-grandfather, what
his Original Mother would think of this,
Pepe will look at you with a half turned, 
crude smile that says he knows just enough
of his ancestry to be dangerous,
which is almost nothing.