Submerged In Water
People take ‘pond life’ as an insult. It shouldn’t be.
The tadpoles in our pond are all kings
of their own domain, and to them the world is empty and full at once –
empty of competition; they are all the greatest, the fattest, the fastest
boy-racers who own the road, like I drowned the Curry Mile in a kiddie pool
but like those stupid boys and their stupid noisy cars
where would the fun be
if they didn’t have each other? I googled it;
when they bump into each other it’s a display of affection
like the rugby team that used to clot the playing fields on Sundays
slapping each other’s backs and punching shoulders and hurling dirty words.
Like a rugby team, they can be strangely beautiful in motion
sunk to different depths, the ones closest to the surface a bright speckled black
and you can see their tiny mouths; the ones furthest away moving silkily
through the silt, a suggestion of a creature, tiny and dark and mighty
in its own way. A pastel smudge on the page.
Another google – tadpoles like boiled lettuce. They sure do!
Clustered around it, jostling like puppies, fascinating and warlike
in their determination, shoving their little heads forward and driving with their frilled tails
- at least, some of them have frilled tails; some smooth, some ragged-edged.
I miss a hundred things:
coffee on campus, and heartsick nights alone, and singing with a sore throat
from the Freshers Flu I never managed to shake off. I miss
the overripe smell of the grass in Platt Fields Park and the
noise of Wilmslow Road at 9am and mostly I miss my friends but
I could sit and watch the tadpoles for hours for absolutely no reason
in the sunshine and that’s
alright.
Daisy Harris
Daisy Harris Poetry 