He follows the winds on waters and waves,

Oft dragging fishers to their murky graves.

He’s an old, frog-faced man with green and black scales,

Local drownings and shipwrecks are his attributed tales.

His clothes are rags made of algae and muck,

To see his fiery eyes is a curse of bad luck.

Vodník floated from his Bohemian home,

In the brown sea of the Gulf he now roams.

 

August twenty-fifth, a great storm was brewing,

He watched from the sidelines Houston’s undoing.

Vodník was baffled; a swamp they chose to settle?

But the Texans fought Nature and showed off their mettle.

They rescued each other, left no one behind,

Poor, huddled masses with their breathing confined.

Their courage brought a smile to his amphibious face,

The water and he, it was time for a race!

 

Those floating on rubble, he swam to their aid,

While on trembling knees, Humankind prayed.

A frog-like monster appeared but none had objected,

A savior arrived, though not the one they expected.

He bounced off the rafts, shoved the victims out of danger,

All eyes were on the beastly, semi-aquatic stranger.

Vodník unhinged his jaw and drew in the waters,

He was about to save both sons and daughters.

 

Vodník was not accustomed to offering assistance,

He spewed such a wave that broke all subsistence.

Although he had pushed them to the rescue boat,

The survivors were struggling to stay afloat.

When they were all safe, they all gave pause,

Such a phenomenon, what was the cause?

“A frog-man, I saw him! He saved us!” they swore,

Vodník never came back and slipped back into lore.