Toad

 It's six o'clock in the morning and the church bell is beginning to toll

The towns folk are starting to get up somewhere between the yellow

musk of street light and their first coffee cup they are reborn

And I turn to you and ask are we what we were once?

And you look askance and say the heroes are in us

And they run out of the page, through drawings on the stage

And I must ask what is this age, but kettles and fans that switch on

And electronic devices, which never suffices our needs, our wants

Where is the human intimacy, where is the human touch?

And you turn to me in your sleep and say why must you ask for so much?

And there is something courageous about the act of rising

Something that habit gives the human and it can be surprising

How automatic, as a rabbit, wakes and leaves his tunnel

We all must stir outside our door down the street side funnel

Somehow the bell demands, in a deep sub-conscious seat

Where we obey a call to arms to protect and serve on our feet

We all must be standing in order to carry on

And though our road may be demanding we can hear our victory song

So stirring, rousing, rebelling we go, defying all the odds

Defiantly defeating, all the squandered times repeating

The capricious acts of the Gods

Yet with our feet we give thanks, to cows and fields and cowpats

And mud, and stone walls that define the boundary lines

Across which we call dogs and cats

And men with umbrellas and women in hats

Rain on the fellas and gals 

The boys and the girls in wellies

That splash

And so long as this can carry on

Then Wells can too

And I will wake to take to the road

And send up my prayers of thanks

To the toad with the lily wet flanks

Who sits like Buddha in the wayside

Before he crawls back under his stone