Category Archives: Animals

The Last Elephant Apple

07 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by in Animals, Environment, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Relationships, Writing

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Dillenia indica- the elephant apple tree.  Image Wikimedia

Hamlet said a king could pass through the guts

of a beggar.  Well, I was not prudish.

I was dependent on the pachyderms.

My genes went on elephantine journeys.

They were spread far and wide by these creatures.

They did their business – pat!- while I would pray.

Firstly, of course, they had to eat my fruit.

(Don’t ask me why Elephas Maximus

assisted me and was so efficient too.)

We had a symbiotic arrangement:

if you scratch my back, then I will scratch yours.

Only, I haven’t seen them for five years.

I am hoping that they will not forget.

Their cognitive map used to bring them back;

if it’s true they have all been poached, I’m stuffed.

They would recall when my seeds would ripen.

Humans don’t need them in the way I do,

but, as heavy horticulturalists,

these so-called Gardeners of Asia,

would lumber in a positive fashion:

not pulling down forests permanently,

but merely clearing a space for others.

Now we have Empty Forest Syndrome.

I have to drop my seeds around my base.

Sure, monkeys, rodents, bats and birds oblige,

but my sphere of influence is curtailed.

Here I stand: Dillenia indica,

last of my kind.  I can do no other.

Humankind’s nine billion seeds may not last,

for men don’t follow the ancestral paths;

they don’t see the elephant in the room,

but argue about constituent parts.

As in the fable, they are visionless.

I am the last Elephant Apple tree.

I can teach you about good and evil.

Venus Flower Basket

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by in Animals, Environment, Nature, Personal, Poetry, Relationships

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File:Expn4384 (27840605922).jpg
NOAA Photo Library

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration Reservoir and Research 2015

Yes, there are three of us in this marriage:

the shrimp couple and me – Euplectella.

It’s a symbiotic relationship.

They live in, rent-free, and vacuum for me

(food and utilities are included)

and have access to my crystal palace –

a conceptual, aquatic Grand Designs –

styled innovative build; a Habitat

lampshade, rather than Liberty lighting.

Shrimps grow into their own imprisonment,

enmeshed and limited by their own greed.

As a species, they are basket cases,

but accept that life is a compromise

and, at best, brittle and precarious.

The kids always leave as soon as they can,

but end up in the same situation;

hard-wired to repeat parental choices.

As bioluminescent chandelier,

I light up their narrow lives and they look

out through trabecular net curtains at

a profound darkness, filled with predators,

who, like voyeurs, spy on their every move.

Some find beauty in us when we are dead:

museum cabinets’ dust collectors.

Like Venus, we are not so delicate:

we strengthen co-operation until

all the oceans run dry; seas turn to glass.

Trust us.  We are the transmitters of light.