Caenorhabditis Elegans by Taylorcustom (I have been unable to discover the actual artist)
See, Elegance !
All the world is nemotodes By dozens by each cubic inch – The soil is crammed to overload, The oceans feel the pinch – These tiny, tiny vermiforms In crevice, desert, gut and tree Together make such mighty swarms More massive than humanity. From ocean trench to distant beach To icecap, there they burst – Wherever we have strived to reach, The threadworms got there first. Whatever we may think about them, Still these parasites abound – We cannot live without them, For the roundworms make the world go round.
I saw a lepidopter’s case, A peon to the butterfly. With filigree of carapace From abdomen to compound eye. The duffer who possessed these critters Spoke at loving length of flitters.
I wondered how this gent possessed Their tiny feet and stain-glass wings, For clearly one who so obsessed Could never harm so precious things – Therefore, it must surely follow, Ev’ry bodyshell was hollow.
These weren’t spent, discarded parts – For butterflies can never shed – They never get a dozen starts, And only gain their wings to spread Upon their change to adulthood – They change for once and change for good.
Maybe then they’re not rejected, Rather they are shiny new – Here displayed to be selected By the crawling grubs who queue – So they choose their new quintessence As they quit their adolescence.
Some are brighter, some are duller, Some are nippy, some enlarged – Pick a model, pick a colour, Carbon-framed and sugar-charged. Are you a grounded caterpillar ? You should check these stats – they’re killer !
A single clap, a sudden slap, A thud against a desk, A backhand swat, a black-red blot, A mid-air Arabesque. Someone let the flies in, Let the flies invade our day, And now we’re exercising An impromptu cabaret. So jump up to that buzzing sound, And waltz your tiny partners round – Until we run these flies to ground, This dance will play and play.
The accent is just intended to show that the middle syllable is the one that should be stressed.
A snail upon the concrete, half-way high, Just scaling up the slabs to the broken-bottle prism That shards into the crown that lacerates the sky – It’s breaking up the straight lines, a bauble on the brutalism.
This snail is still there, years later, its shell becoming its coffin. I wonder if it were poisoned by the concrete ?
A miniature cricket, or maybe a ’hopper, Has found its way into my flat. I thought that the spiders would send it a-cropper, But they’re having nothing of that ! It could be a locust, but that would be holier – Easy to spot though – bright green on magnolia !
I feared it was munching my windowsill cactus, But I see no evidence there. I guess the poor thing must be fasting in practice – My ceiling-top cupboards are bare ! It doesn’t have wings, so it’s still just a young – It’s legs are un-hopped, and its song is unsung.
The day that Grandpa died, that very day, My father took my hand and led the way On up the garden, round behind the potting shed, And showed me how to tell the bees that he was dead: He gently rapped the back-door key Against the frame, and spoke the name, Then wordless handed it to me That I should do the same. I guess it worked – this informed hive, now his, Survived intact, as was, as is – Though surely, bees think not of grief When Father was, to them, a honey-thief.
The day that Father died, it fell to me To take my son and take my key And pass-on the traditions of the hive – To tell the bees he was no more alive. But as I rapped upon their frame, My puzzled boy a little scared, I found I could not speak his name To bees who neither knew nor cared. And so, I placed a hand upon my lad And told him how we honour Dad – It’s not through what the past believes, But like he taught: by being honey-thieves.
All along the branches, And down amongst the bines We hear the insects chattering The gossip of the vines: Seems someone grassed the hoppers up, And sprung a Springtime storm – They even cussed the locusts low To watch the rumours swarm. The wetas whet their wilting wit, And rub their wings in glee – This really isn’t kosher, The Jerusalems agree. But somewhere in the undergrowth, Striations getting shushed – It simply isn’t cricket For a cricket to be bushed. Lurking there in plain sight Are the lives the cryptids hid – You won’t believe the racket When you hear what Katy did !
They started coming over here a decade back or so, A few at first, and hardly noticed, where the good winds blow. Of course, the many coats they wear have helped, despite their glitzy show.
At first, we thought how marvellous to find such guests as these – A touch of the exotic in the roses and the peas, And something to replace the sorry absence of the friendly bees.
But now we hear they’re taking jobs from seven-spotted lads, Or that they breed too many kids compared to local dads, And even claims of bullying, from roaming gangs of bolshy cads !
And sheltering through Winter in a corner, in the gloom, We find them huddled with their kind, at twenty to a room – A lack of integration with the natives, is what we assume.
They offer services for thrips, which two-spots can’t compete in – The gardeners are overjoyed, the unions are beaten. And does it really even matter, if the aphids all get eaten ?
The market does its work, with consequences untoward – They gobble up their rivals to monopolise the board – They’re less a friendly immigrant, and more a raging mongrel horde !
Yet maybe we’re reacting to a non-existent wrong – Let’s leave the species to it, and they might just get along, With more than plenty greenfly shared among this multi-cultured throng.
But let’s not read too much comparing ladybird and man, For beetles run on instinct, with no higher thought or plan. They cannot make a compromise – but we are humans, and we can.
Various species of coccolithophores. Each is a single-celled alga surrounded by plates.
Everything from Shells
Downs go up and downs go down, As wave on wave of frozen ocean Built each ridge and vale and crown With ev’ry ancient tide in motion. Tiny creatures swarmed the sea And dropped their tiny plates all over, From Stonehenge to Normandy As deeply as the Cliffs of Dover.
Singular alga sounds all wrong, as if the term has become strictly a mass noun.
Rhyming Couplets 