35 - Archey’s Frog
leiopelma archeyi
I’m through the gate and back in my walled garden, Archey’s Frog. When we’re gone it will only matter how our two names sounded. Beg your pardon, how they’ll sound in the present tense of that future we two missed. We’re not gone yet, I’m Glyn you’re Archey’s Frog, you sound like my best mate’s pet he scooped from a bushland pond he’d fallen in. Just like Archey, spluttering out all wet, look what I’ve bloody found! When in fact your name derives from Sir Gilbert Archey CBE of the Auckland Institute. Just my silly game in my walled garden, Archey’s Frog. For me you’re still my best mate’s plaything, of all these souls stuck in my pages you’re the one stuck upside down in the Antipathies like Alice says, you are my furthest-from, who a child thinks she can tunnel to right now. God save you from the rat, the cat, the ferret, non-native frogs, non-native men, somehow. I’ll start my tunnel, I’ll dig with it, as the poet said, and did. Two hundred million years unchanged, is Archey’s Frog. He’s a living fossil, Archey, throw him back! Nah bro he’s ours says Archey as he prods his find. Arsehole.
38 - Geometric Tortoise
psammobates geometricus
I asked my man the Hare why on earth he’d stopped to watch the Weasel dancing. He said Look there look there that’s not in Aesop! but nobody was laughing when the Weasel started dining. They pulled the poor Hare stone-dead across the line to be sealed in silver lining still lying there after all this time. While you, now I’m long gone, still gaze upon the scripture of my shell, my green-and-golden plan. Your race is run, my man, and just as well.
41 - Bulmer’s Fruit Bat
aproteles bulmerae
[Luplupwintem, Western Province, Papua New Guinea]
Take a pen and paper, friend, Place the paper on a slope, A book or tray but prop it up, Now lower your face towards the foot, Look upward from the page’s end, Look upward at the rising ground The page becomes. Now mist your eyes So you can see to see what’s what. Deep breath and when you start to write Start there. Write every line you write Above the last one, let the last Recede from sight so all you see Is rising ground, the rising ground There’s less of as you go, the lines You’ve written will be felt somewhere Like fuel but neither look nor check, You have to make it to the top, You have to press on to the peak, There’s nothing between here and there, Go line by line and step by step Rise beat by beat and sound by sound By ultrasound if you are she Are aproteles bulmerae You’re looking for the only place Of safety, in your case the cave Of Luplupwintem and in mine A place of love and time of peace, An age of peace and home of love In your case too and everyone’s Who’s in this book, till then my dear There’s nothing between there and here Go blankly dot by dash by dot A meaning that is all your own So you can hear to hear what’s what And let the fall of what you are Upon the surface of what’s all There is to go on – be your own Until the next and be your own Beyond the next, my upside-down, Until the rising ground is gone, Where there is nothing to be done, Where all the world’s horizon, there At Luplupwintem, everywhere.
40 - Cayman Islands Ghost Orchid
dendrophylax fawcettii
sometimes though I just met you and in your look is everything I want from life beginning now
I know now I just met you that as I start to picture that I scythe it to before our lives I mow it to extinction
and I had so hoped to save you from a world which didn’t have you and a life which didn’t have me look what I did to everything
next time I have just met you I promise it will be enough for me to die out with you
***
Ghost Orchid - what a love song.