Spearleeks
The only way to dine on garlic
Ev’ry day or two,
Is to only visit friends who dine on garlic
Just like you.
So lace that bolognese another clove,
And stir it in that fry,
And then be sure to bring your friends around your stove
To have a try.
And don’t be so afraid to say très bon
When sharing peppy dips –
And don’t be shy to relish it when tasted on
Another’s lips.
Pioneer Species
We’ll still grow trees on Mars,
Under the domes,
And rooted in thin soil –
We’ll take nuts to the stars
And distant homes,
To shade our fervent toil.
Beside potato fields,
And stands of wheat,
They’ll ease the barren crag –
Not for their timber yields
Or fruits to eat,
But just to plant our flag.
It only takes an acorn,
That’s not too much weight
To build a tree.
And ev’ry sapling born
Shall grow up great
In lower gravity.
Yet forests don’t get lush
Till a thousand years
Of Martian peace have been –
I guess we’re in no rush
To clothe our spheres,
And turn the red to green.
Which trees, though, all depends –
Can oak withstand,
Or maybe pine, or beech ?,
To scatter to the ends
Of ev’ry land
Our giant leaps shall reach.
And thus, we’ll leave a trace
From overseas
That shows we once came by.
We’ll still grow trees in space,
Because the trees
Have reached-up to the sky.
Acorn Margins
I’ve heard that oak will make a hedge
If planted it in a row,
But I’ve never seen a single stretch –
Perhaps it’s just too slow.
Or hedgers baulk at pruning oaklings back
To make a wall,
When ev’rything about them says ‘Don’t hack,
But grow me tall.’
Parasites
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…
Swamm-Lore
Humans have been farming fungus
Since the old days of the Tang –
The jellied-ear perhaps was first,
And up the mycoculture sprang !
Shiitake and enoki,
Grown on logs and straw and bran,
Until in damp Enlightened France,
The button mushroom crop began.
Strange, the Romans loved their fungus,
Yet they never learned the knack –
And the monks were so productive,
Yet they only gave the yeast a crack.
Although, it proved quite tricky
Unless sterilized for pathogens –
Far easier to forage in the woods
That mess around with pens.
Meanwhile, folklore had been busy,
Earthy names for ev’rything –
Observe the toadstool and the stinkhorn,
Bird’s-nest and the fairy ring.
But where were all the memory-rhymes
On which ones was it not worth risking ?
Or how to tell a puffball
From a death cap or a poison pigskin ?
Perhaps there are no generalities
To indicate the vicious –
One-by-one, we learn how white gills, say,
Are deadly, or delicious.
Ugly textures, noxious smells,
May sometimes show vitality –
Their looks do not align at all
With fairytale morality.
These days, though, the urban myths
Are more concerned with mould and spore,
And in hallucinations,
And the nuclear clouds of war.
The time of the destroying angel’s
Shrouded in mediaeval mist,
Or from genteel whodunnits,
Or a pith-helmet nat’ralist.
Humans have been farming fungus,
Fascinated with their fruits –
Not really understanding them,
Yet sniffing truffles out of roots.
These days, it’s all commercialised,
To keep safe ev’ry cassarole,
Without an unintended killer
In our toadstool-in-the-hole.
The Chinese appear to have been farming Auricularia heimuer (aka the Black Wood Ear Mushroom) since the Tang Period (10618 – 10907 HE). They local name for it is ‘heimuer’, subsequently used as the species epithet. However, I have been unable to find any guide as to how this is pronounced. I think it may be something like high-moo-er, but that sounds more like a cow who has been feeding on a rather different kind of fungus…
Floating Arums
Walking along the canal,
I see the duckweed is in bloom –
Bank-to-bank, a carpet
For the mallards’ living room.
The moorhens leave a wake of clear
That slowly zips together,
The swans have clumps upon their prows,
And flecks on ev’ry feather.
Rivers are no good, of course,
They hurry up their flow –
But out on the canal,
It teaches how to take it slow.
The coots are scooping mouthfuls,
And the geese are busy working –
But beneath the green and stillness,
I can sense there’s something lurking…
Cactus Practice
My cactus is in bloom,
It feels so wrong,
It feels so out-of-line –
It’s job is just to loom,
All decade long,
With no intent.
It always seemed so stoic
Old as yore,
With little outward sign –
But was this shy heroic,
Waiting for
It’s chance to vent ?
My cactus is in bloom,
What should I do ?
It’s out-of-temper’ment –
It just sits in my room,
All decade through,
In stalk and spine.
It always seemed so zen,
So green and squat –
But this is decadent !
Was it just waiting, then,
Until it got
It’s chance to shine ?
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 !
Vine-Clad
The cottage down the lane had a big end-wall,
Beneath the gable,
Always covered in ivy, growing so tall,
As tall as was able,
Growing upto the eaves, to merge with the thatch,
Such a weight of leaves to the crown –
I’d wondered, how does it all attach ?,
How did it not pull the old wall down ?
Drilling-in through ev’ry crack it can pry,
And drinking the mortar dry,
Whatever it takes to reach the sky –
At least it sheltered from the wind.
But at what cost ? This cottage was built
With overbakes and wattled silt –
So which would be the first to wilt,
When neither was well underpinned ?
I waited years, but never did find out
The power in the growth –
For one hot night in the Summer drought,
A fire killed them both.
There’s a new-build cottage now, with a big end-wall
Whitewashed in lime,
With a single ivy runner – starting small,
But on the climb…
Allspice
Turmeric and ginger,
Cumin, mustard, mace,
Red-hot chilli peppers,
With cardamom to taste,
Cinnamon, paprika,
And nutmeg makes it sweet,
White pepper, black pepper,
Turning up the heat.
Rhyming Couplets 