Tardigrades

A leaky drainpipe drips
creating damp patches on uneven paving,
slime green algae blossoms
forming viridescent ripples
like growth rings and soft
spongy textured moss gently squeezed
produces droplets of moisture;
Adam’s ale, an elixir of microbes.
In backyards everywhere there exists
(unseen to the naked eye)
the whole universe.
Unaware of their titanic sovereigns
millions of tiny organisms are living quiet lives
adjusting hourly to change in habitat
and environmental stresses.
With eight stubby legs they’ve waddled
for millions of years
responding to light with sightless eyes
groping with sharp claws to suck
the juice out of microscopic vegetation.
Using mirrors and plates the little eye
can focus on their transient lives.
A change in weather
and their whole world dries up.
Unlike us, fluctuations slight or catastrophic
are of little consequence to water bears,
and we can only envy their resilience
for long after we have gone
they will be still shuffling along
in their perpetual microcosm.

Charlotte Holm lives in East Yorkshire and is a textile artist, mother and carer. She has had poems published in Black Nore Reveiw, Ink, Sweat and Tears, the Fig Tree, Sixty-Odd Poets, and Black Bough. She was also winner of the Doncaster Rail 200 poetry competition.

In the Meantime, I Study

very small rocks, geographical schemata
of the second-to-last little ice age,
the sixteen legal variants of paisley,
whether I can mine the gold from my teeth
with or without pharmaceutical assistance,
the psi of toes en pointe on waxed floors
versus the flight of a migrating butterfly;
sixteen tons of this and that (I get nothing),
the mutating songs of cardinals and catbirds,
whether my washer on spin can harmonise
with a cat’s purr, the concept of cold
and why I don’t feel it, the back side of water,
how to inlay mother-of-pearl and spin nettles,
what a bird feels when it’s flying,
the language of glaciers, all deep gutturals,
and why Larry is happy. Who the fuck is he?

Jennifer A McGowan has been rewriting myth since before it was mainstream. She approves of fantasy being sold on every bookshelf in stores these days. Her 7th book of poetry is out this year. Her long collections, from Arachne Press, are available here.