Life is one long side-quest, With its sub-plots and distractions – Existence is the Wild West, That is claimed by countless factions.
The through-line soon gets lost Amid the threads of deviations – For attention has a cost That must compete with new sensations.
I’ve never been much single-minded, Far too often getting blinded By the flash of something new. I’ve never had much use for blinkers, Seem to me to just be shrinkers, Shutting down the field of view.
Wait, what’s that they’re playing ? Now it’s lodged into my brain… Sorry, you were saying…? Guess I drifted off again…
Ev’rything I’ve ever written, Ev’ry poem, ev’ry play, Are strings of ones and zeros on a flickering display. Permanently hidden In a hard-drive or a cloud, So hard to leave behind for work so proud. No-one knows my password, Save my hacker and myself, Since I never passed it on to someone else. This security we’ve mastered Will leave all my work unread – It might as well be locked-up in my head !
Out there in the wood Is the old oak tree, Just lapping-up the sunshine, All of it for free. But there in its branches, There lies the mistletoe, Just sucking-up the sap Of its clueless host below. And there on this shrub Is a little caterpillar, That’s munching on the leaves Like a cute and stealthy killer. And inside of the bug there lurks The grubling of a wasp, As it chews-through the organs, Squatting like a boss. But inside the grubling Is another, smaller maggot Of a teeny-tiny wasplet That will wear it like a jacket, And inside of the maggot Is a nematody worm, And further inside that There is a microscopic germ… So they each are chowing-down, And they each are getting fatter, Till they burst-out of the body, That they leave in such a tatter. But the enemies of enemies Don’t turn-out to be friends agen – Just ask the plague that bit the fleas, Then bit the rats, then bit the men…
Bichirs, eels, and climbing perches, Sometimes swim and sometimes crawl – See their wriggles, flops, and lurches, Up up out of the water all. Like lobe-fins did so long ago, They make a hopeful bid to leap and grow. Distant species such as these, Who gulp the breezing air with ease – Distant species, all who please To give the land a go.
But why do gobies only skip the mud of late, And not before ? Just what has changed to make it worth the risk to skate Upon the shore, And dip their ray-finned toes upon the sands of fate Once more ? For surely, this cannot be new – This must be something that they do Since days of dinosaur.
I guess that they were out-competed, Couldn’t play the odds – I guess they found the land replete With hungry tetrapods. So why did they think they ought to ? Small fish from a big pond, Who sought beyond for everlasting worms, And spurned the nice-yet-dull – These fishes-out-of-water, Inventing bicycles.
Mudskippers diverged from the other gobies around 140 million years ago, or at around the time of the American Civil War according to this method. Of course, that doesn’t mean that their particular lineage of goby started venturing out of the water until much later, though I cannot find any details as to when this first happened.
For years, I built-up energy, Laying-down my layers of fat As batteries, never running flat. But now, those bonds are breaking free, Are draining-down, are being spent, Are liquified to pay the rent. Each breath contains a piece of me, A tiny sliver of my store That was sequestered years before – As all those good times, all that glee, Each choc’late cream or hearty stew, Escapes my lips as CO2.
Skeletons are wonderf’ly spooky, The freaks that lurk within – They look both menacing and kooky, Skinny without the skin. Skulls with empty orbits, Missing noses, plenty of chin – Now freed from the muscles’ corset, They can flash their toothy grin.
The shoulder-blades hang down behind, In-front the breastbone juts – While the ribs are like Venetian blinds, Or a prison with no guts. The pelvis is a pair of ears, To form the butt of our butts, And the legs and arms are rod and gears – All held by strings and nuts.
Skeletons are wonderf’ly spooky, Almost designed to shock – Though evolution is rather fluky, And frightens us ad-hoc. They’ve been the backbone of vertebrates for years, Our building-block – So ev’ry October, it’s good to say cheers – Deep down in our marrow, we rock !
Rust never sleeps, That’s why it looks so tired – Red-faced, unpolished, And so flakily-attired. It’s silent as it creeps, So unnoticed in its zeal – Until it has demolished All the strong but sleeping steel.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
I cannot think of something worse Than writing long by hand – How much is my electric verse Beyond my wrist’s command ? It’s only thanks to ones and noughts My words are ever read – Or else, my messy, speeding thoughts Would never leave my head. For who would bother to unpick My blotchy, crossed-out pages ? But thankfully, I type and click My wisdom for the ages.
A cat may be a hairless sphinx, Or taleless Manx, or beefy Coon – But most are more a mini-lynx, That have no need to tweak or jinx That classic shape of ancient minx, That slinks beneath the Moon.
The Siamese design is striking, But it is a custom frame. The common tabby has been hiking Through our lands, and through our liking – Kept by Pharaoh, Greek, or Viking, Looking much the same.
But maybe, underneath that fur, A change is slowly going on. As certain traits succeed, and spur A rise in smarts behind the purr – They’re not the loners once they were In ancient Babylon.
We humans chuckle, and pretend That cats will do just as they suit – But truth is, they still sculpt and bend, Through generations without end, To suit our need to be our friend – And learn how to be cute.
Geological Time Spiral by Joseph Graham, William Newman, & John Stacy
Counting Forwards
Imagine, if we like, To the Earth when it was younger – Let’s go back in our minds As Rodinia accretes and binds. Imagine all the life, With its breeding and its hunger, Is all within the ocean wide, While all the land is dead and dried. Go on back a billion years To when the Tonian began, And the first alga brave appears In the inter-tidal span. And let’s call this Year Thousand in our plan.
Now imagine, if you like, A thousand million later – To Britain, as it will become, Through evolution’s endless sum. Let’s use the past to take a hike, To be our ad-hoc dater – With ev’ry year that we explore That’s adding-on a million more. Ready ? Well then, come with me ! To Year One Thousand, long before, When Vinland Vikings rule the sea And early green specs dot the shore – And let’s see history expand once more.
1000-1280 The Tonian is a long old stretch, From Ethelred to Longshanks. We’re not sure when things happened quite, So none of these are strong ranks, But sponges would appear to appear Around the Fourth Crusade, Just as we leave the Dark Age, As the Boring Billion fade.
1280-1365 The Cryogenian grows cold, As the mediaeval warmth recedes – The plague upsets the status quo, As animals succeed. The monks and fossils leave their records, (Fewer than we’d wish), As peasants rise-up, and the jellies – Both the combs and fish.
1365-1460 The Ediacaran, through the Hundred Years War, Is a pregnant time. The Agincourt slaughter sees new forms of life Are on the climb. We’ve so little idea what, Though likely all the phyla we know Are going their separate ways back then, As the trade and prosperity grow.
1460-1515 Bang ! The War of the Cambrian Roses And Henry Tudor the Trilobite. Bosworth Field is awash with early fish, As eyes first see the light. Predators prey, so the shell evolves, And the codpiece probes the way to dress – And we know so much of those olden times Because of the Burgess printing press.
1515-1555 The Ordovician sweeps the monks away And ends in the great divorce – The Little Ice Age causes mass extinction, Though with a patchy force. Most of the phyla shrug it off, As do the merchants of the day, While plants colonise a whole new world of land, Down Mexico way.
1555-1580 The Elizabethan Silurian Sees vascular plants grow bodice and ruff, While armoured fish develop jaws As Catholics have it tough. The millipedes creep onto shore While Mary Queen of Scots must flee, And Francis Drake sails round the world, While scorpions swarm the sea.
1580-1640 Awaiting the tetrapod armada in Plymouth, Comes the Devonian span – Sharks and ammonites emerge In the Tempest of Caliban. King James writes his Bible On the wood of the early trees, Till the Civil War extinction Brings the shallows to their knees.
1640-1700 With the Carboniferous Restoration, Amphibeans arrive. There’s giant dragonflies in the endless forests, Where spiders thrive. They lay-down future coal, of course, As London is aflame – Till the Glorious Revolution, When the reptiles change the game.
1700-1750 The Permian now joins Pangaea With the Hannoverian line – Dimetrodon and future-mammals Have their chance to shine. But from the North, a Great Dying Sweeps them from their heights – The lava traps of Siberia, And the pikes of the Jacobites.
1750-1800 The Triassic sees a trident of firsts – Pterasaurs, crocomorphs, dinosaurs. The sea’s full of plessies and ichthies and turtles, An empire stretching to distant shores. But American lizards break away From rule they call draconian, And a great extinction’s coming-in That’s all thanks to Napoleon.
1800-1855 The Regency brings us the Jurassic, Victoria sees placentas get birthed, While the Chartists challenge the old big beasts, As the sauropods shake the earth. The allosaurs fight stegosaurs, While archaeopteryx soar above Of the Valley of Death as India splits, On their way to becoming a dove.
1855-1935 The Cretaceous next, but where to start ? Pangea well-and-truly splits, While flowers bloom for Victoria’s weeds, And spinosaurs are Edwardian hits. Veloceraptors perish in the Depression, But T-Rex jazzes the town With Triceratops to the very end, When the asteroid comes crashing down.
1935-2000+ Into the Cenozoic we go, As the atom bomb sees things get hot. Mammals and birds diversify, As hippy grasses grab their shot. Hominids climb down from the trees As Tony Blair brings-down the freeze – Then Christmas Day in ’99 Sees farmers plant communities.
Imagine, if we like, Where our journey goes from here – What might the next long thousand bring To life that’s ever-quickening ? And when extinctions strike, Then new forms suddenly appear. History shows progress all the while, Though fashions change the style. But here, for now, our trek is done, We’ve counted up the years we hold, From an Anglo-Saxon simple son To multi-cultured forms so bold. They tell the greatest story ever told.
Happy birthday ! Yes, it’s true, Rhyming Couplets is turning six, so here’s a special treat for anyone who’s still out there.
Similar to my championing of the Holocene Calendar, I hate counting backwards, and can’t wrap my head around the numbers. Therefore I propose the Paleontology Calendar, which can either begin at 0 (equal to 2,000 MYA) when the Great Oxydation Event was coming to an end, or at 1,000 MYA when the first algae was colonising the land. The latter is more useful, as it results in three-digit numbers rather than four, as we don’t have much evidence for what happened prior to the Ediacaran fauna emerging (they’re not called the Boring Billion for nothing…) However, I’ve adopted the former here so that the dates can line up with European history to make conceptualiseing the events easier, at least for me. By happy coincidence, 1000 MYA is also when Bicellum first appears, which might just be the earliest evidence we have of animals evolving away from algae…
Note that all dates prior to the Cambrian are tentative and likely to change in the future. Just when the animal phylums diverged is unclear as there are very few fossils, and rely on DNA analysis and molecular clocks. Furthermore, the current estimated dates may be a few years different from their historical counterparts for the sake convenience (for example, some think that algae first poked its head out of the water as early as 1200 MYA). Come on, this is a poem, not a textbook !
Rhyming Couplets 