Karmic Tide

First published in Identity Theory

Digging in another garden, jumping into another space and time, I impale a toad on the tines of a garden fork. At first I think it’s a clump of clay stuck to the thick tine but before I can kick the clay off with my boot it morphs into limbs, face, a brown clumpy body. Strangely bloodless and so alive, the toad’s eyes bulge and I feel all the boundaries of life beginning to dissolve and the blood (so hot, so hot) I now see is the dizzying haze as life magnetizes, pooling itself from all its droplets like the balling sun. It’s difficult to pull back, defragment. To scrape the toad from the prongs of the garden fork. A cloud of insects nip at me. A feast inside the karmic tide.