Each tomato nestled inside
one of seven bell jars
soldiered neatly atop our garden wall.

“It’s an experiment,” she whispered,
clad in raincoat and boots,
umbrella ready at hand.

“What kind of experiment?” I returned,
no rain gear for me, an adult without worry of storm.

“It’s a mystery,” she breathed,
eyes intent on vermillion,
globes luminous in the gloaming.

“And how will we know…” I slapped at my arm,
gnawed by a hungry mosquito.

“The Frog Children will come!”
Her incredulous wide eyes squared at me,
not allowing a finish to my question.

“Of course. I forgot.” I bowed to her fervor.

“They will come through the steam.”

“You mean fog.”

“No! The steam.”
And she steered her umbrella toward the pond.

We stood guard until dark.
No Frog Children came.

“Oh, well!” with a shrug and she flit back through
our wooden kitchen door, swallowed up
by the inky hall to her bedroom.

Tomorrow will percolate new mysteries for us
in our garden of bell jars, tomatoes, and steam.

Author’s Note:

This poem is from hour 14 of the 24 Hour Poetry Marathon. The prompt was as follows:

Write a poem that contains at least five of the following ten words. Feel free to include all ten if you wish: Frogs, Evening, Tomatoes, Jars, Raincoat, Steam, Peculating (Which I read as “percolating” by accident after fourteen hours of writing,) , Children, Elbow (Which I changed to arm in the final draft. ), Mystery.