Usually, I am distracted. My head filled with thoughts that have will. Following their unknown paths, unwieldy and unexpected. Usually, but not always, it would lead to happy endings or graceful revelations.

Along the way, if we are fortunate something bids us stay. Begs our attention. A shift in light. A shadow slipping away. Caught between, a movement that betrays life. Somewhat like a pause to cajole us back to the minutiae of another beating heart, near at hand.

That’s how I saw him this morning. As I tilted the hose to let the water fall in a gentle spray over the cluster of wild green things in my garden, he leapt like some sudden Jack from his garden box. I knew him. Full-throated and impertinent, he had been clamouring outside my window for many nights now; the brown tree frog, tender and terrible at the same time. Demanding to be heard yet acquiescing to be hidden. So that Voice is Myth, A Curious Immortal and only the unexpected sight of his slender limbs, translucent against the morning light breathes of the fragile thread of his existence.

In this way he became, breathing and unrepentant, the Life in Hidden Things.