Category: Invertebrates

Frost Flitters

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Peocilocampa populi by Janet Graham

Frost Flitters

December moths are loyal to their name,
Defying Autumn’s dying –
Hugged in furs, as charcoal as the nights,
These moths keep flying –
And yet, they earn so little fame,
From folklores, who ignore them –
However much they circle fairy lights
With soft decorum.

They’re on the wing for Halloween,
Yet bats have all the glory,
And then they’re just too dark to stake a claim
For the robin’s story.
These spinners of the Winter slip between,
Ours fears and holy writ,
But touch on neither, failing at the game –
They just don’t seem to fit.

All the Summer, lappets gorge on oaks,
Unnoticed then as well –
Pupating into eggars with the acorns,
Till a colder spell.
They hatch as the dead are donning cloaks,
As if by frost released –
Then die at the time of the manger-born,
From fasting through the feast.

Pyrophiles

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The 3rd Element – Fire by John Rowe

Pyrophiles

Some plants only germinate through fire,
Waiting out the years
Until the tragedy appears.
They need the forest hotter, tinder dryer,
Even dropping oil
To make a tarpit of the soil.
But there hasn’t been a fire through here, I’m told,
In fifty years of cold –
I guess these trees are all the same-age-old.

Their life-cycle needs the flames be fanned,
They need to taste the char
Before they’ll shoot a single spar.
They need apocalypse to sweep the land
To birth their phoenix seeds,
To grow within the ash of weeds.
And there are even beetles who must birth
Within the hell-scorched earth,
(Though salamanders don’t, for what it’s worth).

Spiders, Plural

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Nesting Instinct by Natalie Featherston

Spiders, Plural

Spiders are only one-by-one,
Each web is a bachelor-pad –
We don’t see social types a ton,
Which might make the squeamish glad !
But how then does a spider dad
Make a brand new spider son ?
Some sexy-togetherness must be had
To see that the deed gets done !
So come the Autumn, see them run
On the carpet, ev’ry lad,
On the hunt for a lady, to have some fun,
When the urge to breed gets bad.
Usu’lly, company drives them mad –
Their perfect number is none !
But once a year, they get up and gad
From the loneliness they’ve spun.

Web-Slingers

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Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Web Slingers

Spiders are litterbugs,
Leaving their webbing just hanging around.
And yet, if one tugs,
Then a derelict ruin is all that is found.
Covered in dust,
And discarded skins, and husks of meals –
They raise our disgust
With the waist that their indolent lifestyle reveals.
Could something not eat this ?
It’s all made of protein and going for free.
Why do we dismiss
Such a feast of spaghetti and gristle for tea ?
Spiders are all blight
Who wontonly turn all our corners to slums –
But could not some dust mite
Come sweeping up after them, feeding on crumbs ?

Flore Pleno

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Photo by Cristhian Cabra on Pexels.com

Flore Pleno

Double roses are showy but barren,
Turning stamens into yet more petals,
Living the bachelor life.
Even if they still make pollen,
Bees can’t push through all those petals,
Leaving them with no midwife.
Yet these are the roses in bouquets,
To symbolise our multilayered love
Of loud and overdressed grooms.
But dog roses are where bees graze –
They’re wide-open with stamens full of love
And hips full of future blooms.

Bumble-Buffet

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Bumble Bee by Nigel Jones

Bumble-Buffet

I don’t know why the alkanet
Is only served by bumblebees,
But ev’ry time I see a patch,
Then bumbles are their only catch.
Their flowers are so dainty, yet,
The smaller sort don’t visit these –
Perhaps their pollen is too heavy
For the lighter bees to ferry ?
The plants spring up in shady wet,
Against the walls, beneath the trees –
Perhaps these factors coalesced
Where bumbles like to build their nest ?
I hear such bugs are under threat
But here they gather as they please –
Where beefy bees are bumbling by,
To drink the deep blue blossoms dry.

Scallies

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Scallies

The scallop is the seafood of the gods,
The oyster of the Hells,
When plucked from out their wavy pods
And slurped within their shells.

As succulent as seaborne lambs –
Just witness Venus and St James,
United in their love of clams
To winkle from their frames.

James prefers his upside down,
As if to hide a pea beneath,
While Venus separates the crown
And scoops out with her teeth.

James gives pilgrims empty shells,
To aid in their devotion.
Venus mounts hers in hotels
To pose on with no clothes on.

T-Moth

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Morning-Glory Plume Moth by Anita Gould

T-Moth

Tell me, rectilinear thing,
If you’re a moth then where’s your wing ?
When not in ragged, fraying flight
It’s held-out straight and rolled-up tight.
You’re crucified in upper case,
And dressed in brightest white and beige –
No camouflage for any place,
Except, perhaps, the printed page.

Vermification

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Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

Vermification

Things keep turning into worms, it would seem,
And not just invertebrates
Exhibiting a certain trait
For straightness in the beam
And legless in the gait.

Things keep sausage-ing to worms, we observe –
The eel and caecilian
Are bound by their criterion
To maximise the curve,
Like the tongue of the chameleon.

Things keep slithering to worms, to and fro –
As through the soil they swim,
The burrowers who drop a limb.
The slowworm may be slow,
But he’s wonderfully slim.

Things keep developing newer way to squirm –
From the lowly and unsung
To the feared and cursed who creep among –
For snakes are just a worm
With a backbone and a tongue.