Blue, Green, Red and Purple: Tadpoles
…-Oh Lord!
I wish I’d grown up to be a frog…
Betty Collins contemplates the nature of an amphibian wonder.
Fossicking for little stones at the water’s edge
suddenly
I am eyeball to eyeball
with a smooth and shiny frog.
Only the pulse in the hunched neck moves
Now is the season when the first rush of winter
Has carried the dried flotsam and jetsam of summer
Away down the creek
And the children arrive in excited bunches carrying
Shiny jars and jam tins stripped of labels,
And homemade fishing nets,
Plunging into the cold eddies,
Capturing the tadpoles
They know that they are related.
They want to watch the strong back legs swell,
the little fore-legs come out,
the heads flatten,
the eyes see.
Oh Lord!
I wish I’d grown up to be a frog:
The world is too full of people
And not enough frogs.
