Compound Rhythm

We have tried to fit you in,
lumbering you with familiar names,
shamelessly labelling you:
plodder, late-comer,
wobbly moss-beast.

Sky-divers, galaxy-striders,
depth-riders, you can leap
from sauna to ice bath,
without shrinking,
in the wink of an eye.

And foolishly, we write rules
that don’t apply to you,
radiating cool, defying filing,
to stride, pioneers hitching wagons
to a new star, taking the next slow,
sturdy steps into ubiquity.

This piece was written in October 2017, from an Allographic workshop about animal poetry with Robin Lamboll. Tardigrade is a term that means “slow walker”, from their lumbering gait; see also terms like “little water-bear”. And, if you didn’t already know, tardigrades are virtually indestructible – if any environment finally tops out at being too much for them, they also have the ability to just suspend their metabolism and ride it out (and that includes extremes of heat, cold, dryness, radiation, toxins; high and low atmospheric pressure, etc.). They’re found in pretty much every environment and altitude across the planet, with earliest known fossils dating back 16 million years, often acting as pioneer species to hitherto uninhabited environments. And their odd, eight-legged structure and ability to survive in outer space has even prompted suggestions (as yet unproven) that they did not originate on this planet!

Look out for this and its Lesser Spotted friends in Spectral next year!

I've gone for a slightly different style from my usual hyper-realistic drawings here, and confess I quite like it! Source image is from Wikipedia.