Abi Curtis

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Frog Prince

Whenever we argue,
I bring my ugliness to the garden.

But this time when my spade slices the compost
a dark stone comes out with it, moving

as if a peat-man came to life after centuries in a bog.
As if Pygmalion hadn’t made a human but a frog.

Under the soil, you’re smooth, flexing, eyes like onyx pips.
I came here angry with another, but have almost severed you.

Your throat shines but you are frightened into silence.
Why am I surprised to find you breathing?

Have I disturbed not only frog but some unlikely feeling?
Spade held out; I carry you away

past onion-globes, delphinium and fern
hanging apples and a bank of thorns

to where the pond shines, patrolled by dragon-fly.
But you won’t leave me, longing to return to earthy dark.

You won’t let go, though enemy I am.
You love me so.

If this were a folk-tale, I would kiss you
on your down-turned mouth

and you would be a person again.
Instead, you slip into the water,

washed back to being green
as the surrounding fields and fading leaves

and I am left to twist the weeds,
to spread the compost,

to remain as me.

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ABI CURTIS is Professor of Creative Writing at York St John University. She has received Eric Gregory and Somerset Maugham Awards for her poetry. Her latest novel is Water & Glass (Cloud Lodge). She is the editor of Blood & Cord: Writers on Early Parenthood (Emma Press, 2023).