Jack Scott writes

The Toad in the Stone

The toad in the stone waited,

waited all alone . . . still

till the rush of years abated.

Those who poured the rock around him

passed on and under their own stones,

became no more than bones,

then . . . nothing

while the toad lay waiting,

suspended,

unblinking,

frozen in the rock,

unthinking.

Then,

to the sound of empires rumbling,

the rock from ‘round the toad came crumbling

            in the unsoft dawn of war.

Exposed,

the waiting toad blinked,

withered,

and was no more.