An Invertebrate Fable

Invertebrates are fascinating, their shapes and behaviour intriguing. In this anthology, the author takes us into the English countryside in search of butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, slugs and snails, as well as the slowly marching millipede or scuttling centipede, all vital players in the ecosystem, often overlooked and underappreciated.

Brown Centipede

A slotted slice of segments

wriggling, no longer than the blades

of grass that tuft about you

on all sides,

you’re a tube of micro-mottles,

rubbery ringlets fused, twisting,

and the sky’s a galaxy away.

Minotaur

Like an immaculately polished shoe,

you’re a bullet of solid gloss,

sheeny shuttle,

black star spinning through space,

elytra grooved like a spinel-spined dybbuk,

crafty assassin, darkling sprite.

Green lacewing

Neptunian mermaid,

siren in a sea of thorns,

emerald web,

eyes agog

like two gold globes,

you cruise the woodland’s

nooks and crannies,

drifting dart of chlorophyll,

viridescent icicle.

The poems are rich with metaphors and imagery, a tumbling, sliding vocabulary that slips, whirs and wriggles into the microcosm, where deep between the grass blades we meet a carnival of exotic creatures. There are poems to delight, some to ponder, and others to wonder at.

Simon’s poems amplify the inherent beauty that these invertebrates possess and recognises that beauty leads to a better appreciation which in turn leads to understanding. And understanding is desperately needed at this time of global insect decline.

Peter Smithers, Royal Ent. Soc.