Feral Friends,

We are devoted to Hylidae even in winter the family we belong to in dreams their trills and crikkity-tik-tik webbing our brains with sweet oozing or maybe just me. Frigid releases of greenish meter duckweed lines jumps and syllables froggishly comes the blank page, vernal murmurs fixed underfoot an equinox prelude, pond-ice tunes the chorus soon to come.

This could be the weekend. Get to a muddy place, still your soul, listen for winter tree frogs.

Jack Phillips

_{Blanchard’s cricket frog (Acris blanchardi) in late winter, Fremont County, Iowa — one of the earliest spring singers. Photo by Robert Smith. Top: Wild poets listening to tuning-ice during the March thaw. Photo: Billie Shelton.}