14d • ✨ Poetry 🪄🌙 ✨
Catching Frogs
About this time last year, I wrote this poem for my mom. It's past Mother's Day, but I thought I would post it for all the moms and all their children.
Catching Frogs
(For my Mom, Aunt Debbie, who always knew I’d find the words.)
I used to think there was a method to becoming—
creases we were meant to follow,
a pattern hidden in the folds,
some divine geometry of selfhood.
But now I know:
we’re just paper.
We crinkle and curl and crease however we need.
We tear sometimes.
But we also learn to fold again.
Still, if we can fold ourselves into something,
I’d like to be a frog.
Some, a dragon,
Some a swan,
Something lofty or regal.
But me, a simple frog.
For you.
You always liked them.
Little green miracles,
good for the joy,
and for the jumping,
always singing even in the rain.
I’ve been catching frogs lately—
not real ones,
but memories that jump when I get too close.
I reach,
and they slip just out of grasp—
splash, ripple, gone.
But some stay.
Some let me hold them.
Like the scent of lilac
by the bench outside your work,
where I waited after school,
small and sure that you’d come.
Or the wrapping paper
with carefully curled ribbon
from a birthday gift I can’t remember,
only that it was from you,
and that it mattered.
I don’t remember the presents.
I remember that you wrapped them so beautifully.
I don’t always remember the words.
But I remember how you stayed.
I remember the mug—
white with an “M.”
You said I’d need a coffee cup
to start my life.
I still drink from it.
You knew I’d need something warm
to hold onto.
There were movies—
ones we quoted so often
they became our second language.
And hugs—every night,
a shield against losing you
the way I lost them.
I remember asking if I could call you Mom.
You said “of course."
I believed you.
But the word took its time.
Some names grow slow
because they grow deep.
I have a tendency to jump away,
And, of all the things to remember,
I never forget the leaving.
Each time, I carried pieces of you—
stitched into memory,
into love,
into becoming.
And even now,
when distance makes a quiet between us,
I’m still reaching into that pond of time,
trying to catch frogs—
moments,
laughter,
the sound of your voice.
If I could, I’d fold all that into something
not perfect,
but deliberate.
Good for joy,
and for the jumping.
If I am anything now—
a poet, a wanderer,
a paper frog—
it’s because you caught me
before I was thrown away.
Because you believed I could fold myself
into something whole.
If I ever seemed far away,
it wasn’t because I forgot.
It’s because I was gathering.
And now, I offer this:
not perfect,
not everything—
but what I could catch.
A little paper frog, folded with care,
jumping home.
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Catching Frogs
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