Courtney Druz
Those Tadpoles
Pollywog wiggle-heads, double-living wrigglers,
muffle-sensed and dumb as fish they squirm
spermoid from the jelly-mass of eyeballs
we spawn. Don’t be disturbed by our consciousness
or their own collective lack. Believe that everything
is straining towards it, that all beings have a niche
in the broader ecosystem. Believe, if you wish,
that nothing which survives is gasping in dry gas.
Admire the fluid breathers. Don’t think about us frogs,
two-timing bounders, lecherous for water on the pores,
croaking our lust-calls in their poignant amniotic pond
where eggless they encapsulate legless progress.
All complex natural processes are irreversible.
They soft-boned whips, we fuse-boned springers,
they peeled-egg eyes of the wide field, prey,
we poly-lidded predators, wide-mouthed,
they black apostrophes small as flies
on our long pink tongues—content to become us.
We jump and fall, dive and rise;
reptiles and birds have passed us by—we hop
fractionally to the unattainable element.
