Birth of Eventually Venus - More New Mexico Spadefoot Toads

New Mexico Spadefoot Toad Tadpole - almost a toad. You can see that gelid mud-water of its pond coating my hand.

Birth of Eventually Venus - by Archibald Macleish

Cast up by the sea
By the seventh wave
Beyond the sea reach
In the rubble of weed and
Wet twig
The not yet amphibious
Animalcula
Gasps and wiggles on the beach
Gathering her long gold hair about her
And gazing with pure eyes
Upon the unknown world

I am fascinated by this Archibald Macleish poem.

The phrase “not yet amphibious”, along with the line “gasps and wiggles on the beach”, remind me of watching Spadefoot Toad tadpoles as they race to morph into toads. The fragile, miraculous hope of life.

Newly morphed New Mexico Spadefoot Toad in my hand. You can just see a stump of the tadpole-tail.

New Mexico Spadefoot Toad in the shallow water of its pool, dead moths snow-flaked onto the water surface.

Think what it must be like to be a newly morphed Toad. Leaving the water for a new life in a desert. How strange the world must seem.

I wonder if they are “…gazing with pure eyes upon the unknown world.”

A drying New Mexico Spadefoot Toad pool. This one is on a dirt road, and is just an inch or so deep at this point. It’s only got a day or two left before the whole thing will be just cracked mud.

A dead New Mexico Spadefoot Toad - this one wasn’t quite able to turn into an adult toad quickly enough. You can still see its tracks in the mud.

It’s also strange to think how things we say and write can be re-interpreted over the years, twisted into meanings that we might not have had initially.

For example, I suspect that Mr. Macleish wasn’t writing about tadpoles. Though I was reading about them.