Question

Opinions and analysis on the following poem by the NZ poet Fleur Adwingspan 'Tadpoles'

Answer 1

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 Elizabeth’s womb, and I a grandmother
only prospectively, and at long distance.

All this glory from globes of slithery gloop!
Well, slithery gloop was alright, with its cloudy
compacted spheres, its polka dots of blackness.
Then dots evolved into commas; the commas hatched.
When they were nothing but animated match-heads
with tails, a flickering flock of magnified
spermatozoa, they were already my darlings.

And Oliver lay lodged in his dreamy sphere,
a pink tadpole, a promise of limbs and language,
while my avatars of infancy grew up
into ribbon-tailed blackcurrants, fluttery-smooth,
and then soaked brown raisins, a little venous,
with touches of transparency at the sights
where limbs minutely hinted at themselves.

It is the transformation that enchants.
As a mother reads her child’s form in the womb,
imaging eyes and fingers, radar-sensing
a thumb in a blind mouth, so tadpole-watchers
can stare at the cunning shapes beneath the skin
and await the tiny, magnificent effloration.
It is a lesson for a grandmother.

My tadpoles grew into frogs in their generation;
they may have been the grandparents of these
about-to-be frogs. And Oliver’s a boy,
hopping and bouncing in his bright green tracksuit,
my true darling; but too far away now
for me to call him across the world and say
‘Oliver, look at what’s happening to the tadpoles!’