A Night of Frogs

A frog lives in our garden
in a pond beneath the tree.
I hear it croak at bedtime
as it says ‘goodnight’ to me.

A frog lives by our back door
on a post below the light.
I sneak outside to say ‘hello’
because it’s only there at night.

A frog lives in our laundry
in the corner of the wall.
I check when I come back inside
to make sure it didn’t fall.

A frog lives in our kitchen
in the space behind the sink.
It freezes in the torchlight
when I get myself a drink.

A frog lives in our bathroom
and I don’t know what to do
because it isn’t where it should be.
Yuk! It’s swimming in the loo!

My mum comes in the bathroom,
plants a kiss upon my head.
‘The frogs are fine just where they are
but you should be in bed!’

Kristin Martin

 Kristin Says: A few years ago, when I was travelling around northern Australia with my family, I was amazed by all the places where we saw frogs. We saw a tiny frog on the mirror in the girls’ toilets at a caravan park. We saw an even tinier frog siting behind the cold-water tap on the sink. And we saw a huge frog hiding under the toilet seat. I wanted to tell people about all these amazing places you could find frogs, so I decided to write a frog poem. To make my poem more interesting I developed a story about a child who has lots of frogs in her (or his) house. I pretended I was the child, and I was up at night, creeping around my house with a torch looking for the frogs. This is the poem I wrote.