After a rainstorm, frogs gather in a pool and gutter, their yellow-and-green bodies mostly hidden, only their eyes shining above the slime. Night brings fireflies and the scent of flowers, and the frogs begin their rhythmic calling. Louis Simpson lets that sound feel both ugly and strangely content: it is “monstrous,” yet their voices are “filled with satisfaction.”
The final lines shift to the speaker’s own divided feelings. In the city, he misses the country; in the country, he misses conversation. Calling human talk “our happy croaking” links people to the frogs, as if our exchanges, too, are rhythmic, instinctive, and perhaps just as odd when overheard. The mood is humid, dreamlike, and lightly ironic—affectionate toward the natural world, but aware that both frog song and human chatter can be lonely, comic, and comforting at once.