Dendrogramma Enigmatica

 

First scraped off the sea floor with a sled,

the creature of the title, like a seahorse parasol,

has mouthparts down its stem

and a many-forked digestive tract

all through its bust-umbrella canopy

(there’s a notch in each of them

which lets the water through).

 

If it’s to be a new phylum,

not species, genus, family, order or class,

but phylum, as researchers claim,

there’s just the edging of a wish

that, rather than a minute mushroom animal,

it could have been a gryphon.

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copyright © 2014 Simon Williams.

First appeared on Poetry24, 2014

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