Sandhill Crane

Clan fidelity!

The family groups migrating

Stay close together

In the great tribal

Sweep of thousands over time,

Grandeurs of landscape,

Long generations

Of finely balanced kindred

Centuries in order

Saw-Whet  Owl

Tiny, ferocious

Fierce recluses of the woods

Scimitar talons

Cutting through flesh, bone

Dissecting modest creatures

Less emphatic lives

Mountain  Lion

This lion has been seen

To leap impossibly high,

A deer in its mouth

And has roamed the land

Thousands of miles West to East

Ignoring boundaries

Houses, roads, power lines

Civilization's clutter -

Died in Connecticut

Carrying its own

Vast particular wildness

Through hidden pathways

Stealthy, nocturnal,

Crepuscular, glimpsed seldom .

And what of its prey?

Fleet of foot, wide-eyed

The calculus of energy

To bone and sinew

Long, low and lean

Greyhound-shaped, fiercely enhanced -

Feline of splendours

Climbing Mouse

In the deep forest

Secretive, climbing at night

The highest branches

Burrows in tree roots

Finds its labyrinthine path

Surviving edges

Mountain Sheep

The magnificence

Of those splendid horns belies

Quite a modest creature.   

And yet on its cliffs

It has mastered gravity

To reach specks of grass  

Firelfies

It's complicated!

Bioluminescence may

Signify fireflies

But other beetles

Know the same trick, to dazzle

Their mates with glory

And show the dull world

The  brilliant constellations

Of themselves, the stars.

Puffin

Evolving penguins!

Their flight a frantic scramble

Swimming a delight

 

Northern Ghost Bat

Why so different?

Solitary, white, all others

Dark, clouds, colonies?

Life against the grain?

Deeply temperamental?

An individual?

We The Primates

How many primates

From scurriers and scampers

Swingers and clingers

In  mountains and jungles

Cloud forest denizens

Wide-eyed nocturnals

Hangers-on barely

The counts dwindling scarily

The numerable endangered

Even our order

A darkening mystery

We don’t know the half

Close or remote

Or too close for comfort

An uneven family

Whose seats at  the table

We argue the membership

We swarm of bouncers:

So:  mouse-lemurs, lemurs, aye-aye and Lorises

Tarsiers and marmosets. Tamarins, sakis,

Capuchins, ouakis, douroucouli, titis

Squirrel monkeys, howlers, spider monkeys, woolies,

Barbary apes and macaques, mangabeys, baboons, 

Mandrills and geladas, vervets and dianas

Red-bellies, talapoins

De brazzas, allen’s and parades,

Colobus, proboscis, langur, gibbon, hoolock

Siamang, orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla

Bonobos, humans, no, wait, do we belong here,

Looking round the relatives,

Gods of decision, environmental rulers

Unable to distinguish, let alone control

In charge of the ticketing

Who clambers on the bus

The one-way express with people on the roof

Hanging on the windows, running by the side

Heading for metropolis, concrete canyons, cells in zoos

Labs of fancy DNA staffed by people with the blues ?

Hawk Moth and Orange-kneed Tarantula

Sometimes the wasp wins

Sometimes the spider: balanced

Combat for ever

Sometimes the spider dies

Sometimes the wasp nurtures all

The baby spiders

And round and round They

Dance the minuet of death

As long as the cloud forest lives, and the Earth turns.

Pampas Deer

Fleet and elegant

Suffers loss of habitat

Moves into the woods

What caused the male deer

To stay with her, and help his mate  

Protect the newborn?

Wyvern

Very challenging

To be a mid-stage dragon

When so strong and fierce

When justice rears up

On twin unbalanced pillars

Endangering the world

When change is rapid,

Heat rising sudden, intense

From calm birth at sea

Caladrius

When I am lying sick

And my loved ones are wondering

Bring me the white bird

 And see, does it turn away?

Then all the world will turn away.

Or will it face me out

And take from me death's failing breath
And rise to cleanse it in full sun
Above the clouds of Earth, in brilliant sky?

Nine-tailed Fox

The nine-tailed foxes

Running spirals through the night

Appear, disappear -

The collapsing mists

Sift tantalizing glimpses

Bewildering sight

Hunters and hunted

Multiplying images

Mirroring lost paths

Weave ancient patterns

From the wisps of landscape

Foreshadowing worlds

Where time is held suspended 

Echidna

Typhon, her lover

Enters the cave of darkness

Ruptures the silence

In her raage of birth

She will utter forth monsters

A chain forever

In the throes of life

You'll never encounter her:

In death you'll join her.

Fire Dragons

The fire dragons' wings

Glow with pure iridescence

Need no photonic light.

In the deepest caves

Down in the profoundest seas

The chemistry burns

The millions set to rise

Their shadows plunging upwards

From anaerobic bliss

Gargoyle

A French dragon came

In the dark age of nightmares'

Death and destruction.

It took the green sword

Of Saint Romain to kill it

Banish its poisons.

Where it fell a spring

Of clear angels' tears gushed forth -

One sip can cleanse the soul.

Now sculpted heads of stone 

Gush rains of heav'n from the roofs

Of sacred places

Wind up the charms within,

Guard against the looming clouds

Of dragons settling from