Bufo Bufo
Clown’s name for the creature
in my cellar. I give him gladly
the one room I don’t want –
sodden cardboard, wet dark,
the gluey varnish of slugs.
What he eats: dollops
of glassy, yellow-grey meat,
host to scavenging mites,
the only things down here
to move fast. He creeps
over the floor’s uneven brick
as if movement is painful,
or crouches still, under the drip
from a leaking pipe, moist
and glistening, pumping
himself to bursting.
It’s spring, when toads smell their way
to water, and the females’ spawn
is strung in necklaces
of black-eyed beads.
But he’s my prisoner –
soft, warty stone
who at night swells
to the size of a man.
(from The Book of Blood, Cape 2004)
Vicki Feaver lives in Scotland and is currently working on a new collection, due out for her 70th birthday in 2013, Like a Fiend Hid in a Cloud.
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