Dik-Dik

Shy, dainty, graceful,

Secretive, fierce, defensive,

Protecting its world

Monarch of the glen?

Majesty's alternate guize

Quiet nobility

Nuclear family

One life mate, a single fawn

To strive and die for

PYTHON

Swaggering prince

Giant among snakes.

They say python has no house.

I heard it a long time ago

And I laughed and laughed and laughed.

For who owns the ground under the lemon grass?

Who owns the ground under the elephant grass?

Who owns the swamp - father of rivers?

Who owns the stagnant pool - father of waters?

Because they never walk hand in hand

People say that snakes only walk singly.

But just imagine

Suppose the viper walks in front

The green mamba follows

And the python creeps rumbling behind -

Who will be brave enough

To wait for them?

Yoruba Poem  (Author not identified)

--

Fox (1)

Foxes have colonised London spectacularly in recent times, and for many city people they are the major wildlife presence. For people in England seven hundred years ago the wild was a close and surrounding reality. The poet of the great 14th. century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" was someone who knew his animals and the  world of hunting very well. Here is the description of the beginning of a hunt.The translation into modern English does not carry all the specialized vocabulary of the original, but gives us a brief glimpse of  wily Renard, and I recommend a complete reading of the story, which also has embedded vivid deer and a memorably fierce wild boar - More on the fox in later posts -  Richard

 '"Twas a fair frosty morning, for the sun rose red in ruddy vapour, and the welkin was clear of clouds. The hunters scattered them by a forest side, and the rocks rang again with the blast of their horns. Some came on the scent of a fox, and a hound gave tongue; the huntsmen shouted, and the pack followed in a crowd on the trail. The fox ran before them, and when they saw him they pursued him with noise and much shouting, and he wound and turned through many a thick grove, often cowering and hearkening in a hedge. At last by a little ditch he leapt out of a spinney, stole away slily by a copse path, and so out of the wood and away from the hounds. But he went, ere he wist, to a chosen tryst, and three started forth on him at once, so he must needs double back, and betake him to the wood again.

   Then was it joyful to hearken to the hounds; when all the pack had met together and had sight of their game they made as loud a din as if all the lofty cliffs had fallen clattering together. The huntsmen shouted and threatened, and followed close upon him so that he might scarce escape, but Reynard was wily, and he turned and doubled upon them, and led the lord and his men over the hills, now on the slopes, now in the vales, while the knight at home slept through the cold morning beneath his costly curtains.-"

Flying Dragon

Evolving glory:

Ribs and skin, slow distortion:

Lizard to dragon

Still descends to earth

Buries rare draconian eggs

Reassumes the sky

 

A Robin (The European Robin)

by Walter de la Mare

Ghost-grey the fall of night,

Ice-bound the lane,

Lone in the dying light

Flits he again;

Lurking where shadows steal,

Perched in his coat  of blood,

Man's homestead at his heel,

Death-still the wood. 

Odd restless child,. it's dark;
All wings are flown

But this one wizard's - hark!- 

Stone clapped on stone ! 

Changeling and solitary, 

Secret and sharp and small, 

Flits he from tree to tree, 

Calling on all.

The Snail 

By Walter de la Mare

All day shut fast in whorled retreat

You slumber where - no wild bird knows;

While on your rounded roof-tree beat

The petals of the rose.

The grasses sigh above your house

Through drifts of darkness azure sweep

The sun-motes where the mosses drowse

That soothe your noonday sleep.

But when to ashes in the west

Those sun-fires die; and, silver, slim,

Eve, with the moon upon her breast,

Smiles on the uplands dim;

Then, all your wreathed house astir,

Horns reared, grim mouth, deliberate pace,

You glide in silken silence where

The feast awaits your grace.

Strange partners, Snail! Then I, abed,

Consign the thick-darked vault to you,

Nor heed what sweetness night may shed

Nor moonshine's slumbrous dew.

Loon

Spirit of two worlds:

When the lakes freeze, the ocean

The Great Northern Diver

One of many seabirds

On the margins with the raven

Among the raucous gulls, the ducks, 

Herons, the fishers, scavengers

Gliding in the plane above the waves

Diving into the salty riches

In summer monarch of the ponds

The handsome liveried possessor

The splendid estate, the untidy nest

Precious chicks to teach and bear upon one’s back

Just once I met him under water

Flying powerfully in the chase

Oblivious of the clumsy human

And day and night the haunting call,

The cries of contact and alarm

The wild calling itself

Mourning for the centuries of survival

The thrilling notes across the water

The bubbling spring of resurrection 

The echoes of past ages

The slow pulse of the land

Strong wingbeat of the seasons

The spreading circles of the rippling years

Fading, fading to the edge 

Sabre tooth Cat

Social or solitary

Leonine or spotted coat

Retractable claws?

Fearsome predator!

Did we meet them face to face

Extinguishing the giants

The megafauna?

They come padding through the night

Passing through the veil

Into the darkness of time past, the long path of the gone 

The Moth

    Isled in the midnight air,
    Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
    Out into glooming and secret haunts
    The flame cries, 'Come!'

    Lovely in dye and fan,
    A-tremble in shimmering grace,
    A moth from her winter swoon
    Uplifts her face:

    Stares from her glamorous eyes;
    Wafts her on plumes like mist;
    In ecstasy swirls and sways
    To her strange tryst.

Walter de la Mere

Auroch

Four hundred years back

In a deep Polish forest

The last great one died

For all our history

They had thundered through our dreams

Flickered on cave walls,

Their bones in temples

Palaces, even houses

The stuff of legends

Now descendant herds

Multiply to threatening size

Heat the very air

Time for more thunder

For stories to live again

For our blood to quicken

Water Opossum

Evolution's task:

A  babies' waterproof pouch 

That allows them air -

A ring of muscle!

The babies stay dry and warm

But how do they breathe?

Opossum magic!

How many drowned or passed out

Before the mystery?

 

Babblers

Loud advertising:

Risky yet still comforting

For the feeding flock

Dense vegetation

Demands careful compromise:

Safety in numbers

Over millennia

The noise has worked well enough

For workaday birds

 

Lystrosaurus

by

John Warren

Lystrosaurus was a mammal-like reptile that survived the great Permian extinction, the greatest

biological catastrophe of them all, when somewhere around 90% of all species became extinct. Not

only did Lystrosaurus survive, it thrived in the aftermath and continued on the path that led to

mammals

Whoa!

What was that?

A great outpouring of lava?

or

A change in the rivers?

or

All the oxygen was taken up by the rocks, turning them red?

or

A great collision of all the continents together?

Or?

So much empty space!

So many unfilled niches!

We can go forth and multiply

Thrive, and, perhaps, evolve?

Kingfisher

The terrible beak

At the point of such brilliance

Is meaning its life

If it hurls itself

Repeatedly at the spot

Where the tunnel will start

The deadly weapon

Unerringly spears the fish

Drills up to the nest

Into the darkness

Tenderly brings love deep

To its meaning: life

--

Dozing March Bears

To wake or not to

Wake! That's the question - whether

The weather and the sap

Have made up their minds

It's time for deeper process

To stir the answer

"Bats" by Randall Jarrell
(published 1964)  

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting--
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her high sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night, and echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is, how big it is,
Which way it's going:
She lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches
In full flight; in full flight
The mother drinks the water of the pond
She skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him
In moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.
Their single shadow, printed on the moon
Or fluttering across the stars,
Whirls on all night; at daybreak
The tired mother flaps home to her rafter.
The others all are there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
They wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside-down, they sleep in air.
Their sharp ears, their sharp teeth, their quick sharp faces
Are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
She folds her wings about her sleeping child.

 

Meerkat

Gregarious omnivores

Excellent sight, hearing, smell

Burrows, tunnels, chambers

Lords of creation?

Oh, but constantly alert:

Death comes from the sky!

Muskrat

Faced with challenges

Their solutions similar

To those of beavers

With less landscaping

The muskrats find their niches

Enjoy discreetly

Spider Monkey

Graceful calculus

Geometry in  motion

Pentangular reach

Evolution's pace

Kept them and trees together -

How else this wonder?

Terraforming Mars

Might give their stretching children

A higher trapeze

Hermit Crabs

On the beach at dusk

Along the tideline debris 

Hermit crabs parade

Good housing is scarce

And needs changing frequently:

All is visible,

Finding critical:

Unlikely shells are scrambled

Barely squeezed in

Survival depends

On the possibility -

Comfort secondary

When the tide returns

The parade ends in triumph

But what of the homeless? 

Scarlet Macaw

In Costa  Rica

Against a blue sky

I saw scarlet macaws fly

Create Aztec art

In one brief moment

A pattern for the centuries

That could not be lost

--

Richard Posner

https://richardprism.blogspot.com/

We The Poets: https://citizenpoets.blogspot.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Richardprism

All Hands On Deck: https://richardtamworthlc.wixsite.com/allhandsondeck

Dipper

To walk a streambed

Takes particular talent

In a diving bird

The large rocky nest

With a dome and side entrance:

Dippers live in style !

Rufus-tailed Jacamar

From snatching insects

Out of clean air, Jacamars

Alight, dig tunnels:

She leads, for breeding,

Shares the sitting, he by day

She through the long night

Zebras (2)

So what’s in zebras

That stays stubborn, forever wild?

Why untamable? 

Can this be random,

A tangle in the DNA?

Or is this culture,

Behaviour transmitted?

A restlessness of spirit

The zebra air breathed?

Zebras

Grevy’s outdazzles
The galloping winking stripes

Spooking leonine eyes

(Grevy’s zebra is a bigger, stripier version of the Common Zebra)

Baby Tortoise by D.H.Lawrence

You know what it is to be born alone,

Baby tortoise!

The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,

Not yet awake,

And remain lapsed on earth,

Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;

To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base

And reach your skinny neck

And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,

Alone, small insect,

Tiny bright-eye,

Slow one.

To take your first solitary bite

And move on your slow, solitary hunt.

Your bright, dark little eye,

Your eye of a dark disturbed night,

Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,

So indomitable.

No one ever heard you complain.

You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple

And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,

Rowing slowly forward.

Whither away, small bird?

Rather like a baby working its limbs,

Except that you make slow, ageless progress

And a baby makes none.

The touch of sun excites you,

And the long ages, and the lingering chill

Make you pause to yawn,

Opening your impervious mouth,

Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;

Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,

Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,

Your face, baby tortoise.

Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple

And look with laconic, black eyes?

Or is sleep coming over you again,

The non-life?

You are so hard to wake.

Are you able to wonder?

Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life

Looking round

And slowly pitching itself against the inertia

Which had seemed invincible?

The vast inanimate,

And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,

Challenger.

Nay, tiny shell-bird.

What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,

What an incalculable inertia.

Challenger,

Little Ulysses, fore-runner,

No bigger than my thumb-nail,

Buon viaggio.

All animate creation on your shoulder,

Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.

The ponderous, preponderate,

Inanimate universe;

And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.

How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,

Stoic, Ulyssean atom;

Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.

Voiceless little bird,

Resting your head half out of your wimple

In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.

Alone, with no sense of being alone,

And hence six times more solitary;

Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages

Your little round house in the midst of chaos.

Over the garden earth,

Small bird,

Over the edge of all things.

Traveller,

With your tail tucked a little on one side

Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.

All life carried on your shoulder,

Invincible fore-runner.