Question

Their little black thread legs, their threads of arms,
their mini-miniature shoulders, elbows, knees–
this piquant angularity, delicious
after that rippling smoothness, after nothing
but a flow of curves and roundness in water;
and their little hands, the size of their hands, the fingers
like hair-stubble, and their clumps-of-eyelashes feet…

Taddies, accept me as your grandmother,
a hugely gloating grand-maternal frog,
almost as entranced by other people’s
tadpoles as I was by my own,
that year when Oliver was still a tadpole
in Elizab