Charles Darwin Exhibition 2009
[Natural History Museum]
What made you pull my tail?
The look I gave you said
What made you pull my tail?
in this space of territory
between me and you.
I am not questioning your questions,
but I, Iguana, sit here
within my instinct,
heat-holding the sun.
Riding on a tortoise
Let's go for a ride,
galloping Galapagos
on the giant tortoise.
A good place to think,
joined at the hip,
on this saddle shell,
racing to the finish line
of all extinctions -
tortoise-steak for lunch!
A day at the Zoo
Jenny the Orangutan -
content in dreams,
stretching back long miles
to the forest's inner fringe,
arriving at
the places of smiles.
The box of shells
This tray of shells holds
the surf line's fossils of today,
play-pieces for a chessboard,
and how splitting the shale
can find a hidden whale.
The HOX gene
I have been told about the HOX gene.
I, Zebra, cannot control it.
Once triggered it will give me 43 stripes
or 80 black and white stripes.
No hoax this, it will give me
all the camouflage I need
for this-size grass.
|
