Sleeping Gorilla
He sprawls, abandoned
By the glass that borders
Keeps him in the land of apes
Tented high against the winter cold.
Under him he's sprinkled grass
A token nest he does not need
Except from deep instinctive drive
His day nest and his night all adult life.
He has his family - not for him the stark magnificence
The awful loneliness of past encaged gorillas
Who stared for all eternity
Into the shifting crowds of people sauntering by.
So he is lost in sleep
And dreams impenetrably
Of sun and rain and sudden storms
And long alerts for neighbouring clans
But most of family moving slowly through the forest
The strong black arms
That bind the mothers, children, siblings
And of the silverbacks whose eyes patrol the band
And hold their strength potential, just in case.
Yet being a gorilla is unimaginable -
Beyond their pillars lies another planet
An alien world of smells an d sounds and small tricks of forest light -
We cannot gauge the balance, intricacy, the tapestry, the mossy depths
Nor recreate this world for them
The poor ones born in hospital, in prison -
The living treasure house of genes
The thousand species seen
The millions unseen
That underpin all of us -
Skinks
The mystery of the links'Twixt lizards, snakes and skinks
Reveals that over time
Diversity sublime
Began with hard decisions
That led to clear divisions -
The lifetime spoils were rich
Decisions on each niche
The question was of legs -
But here the question begs
Advantages both ways
The argument's a maze-
Most skinks grew legs and feet
For some that spelled defeat
Survival seemed profound
They burrowed underground
Some with legs vestigial
Some with bare residuals
So skinks can thrive 'most anywhere
Where life is plentiful or rare
In heat or even chillier
In places snakes find sillier
And lizards look for warming sun
To strut their stuff and have their fun.
So homage to the humble skinks
That bridge the gaps and span the links..
Tamarin
On his haunches
Deft hands sorting seeds
So easily anthropomorphized
A little bearded man absorbed
Patient in the workaday
Two modest species, not closely related to each other -Okapi and Pygmy Hippopotamus
Leading quiet, shy lives
Smaller forest relatives,
Diverse, on the brink
Their major cousins,
The dangerous 'potamis
The glamorous giraffe
Evolved in culs de sac
Would stand alone without them
Giant outliers, islands of destiny Maladapted to lives elsewhere--
While the Okapi, disappearing in the dappled light
The 'Potamus walking the river bed
Are both perfected in their niche.
Ostrich
Bird of questing look!
Unwavering guardianship,
Equal height to mine
Protector of young -
A savannah world of giants
Of savage dangers
Massive legs for speedA kick to fell a zebra,
Banish hence a lion
Persistence to stay,
To outface every ambush,
Outstare the hunters
The evolving trade
Of heft for flight
Like ours, of mind for soul.
In the Franklin Zoo, Boston, where one old lion, Dinari, survives his brother, and is not judged fit
in his last days to receive another companion -
People made his kopjeA place of sweeping command
A rock of loneliness
With Kamaia gone
Swept away by the stiff broom
Dinari, solitary lord
Drinks his long draught of perfect grief
Too old, too life-set
To receive a fresh another
He lies, turns, settles
And sniffs the air so pregnant
With the beings and doings
Of caring apes he cannot hunt,
Who gaze in baffled awe.
