Colin Simms
Untitled
for F.N.G., wielder
Wouldn’t have found one species
if the traffic to Redesdale Show
hadn’t stunned its flight to the road
inside my leaning-like its metal-glow
and elytra-striations mekkin me slow...fold-wings back under blackshield wingcases
- why should such a water beetle hev to fly.
where should such a successful predator need to go
when the Rede’s pools are full of fry
late tadpoles, all manner of larvae?…Thinking of the restlessness in all predators
Basil and I return to await the she-otter
peel out of the same Redewetter, near-dark
(they’ve just seen another in the Mill carpark)
and portage to where her cubs are hidden
but to “gladden old eyes” to a glistening
and his lips whetted to a near-otter whisselling!
more, mind, not to speak of until years ‘stil later...
chiming with this further little discovery, elated,
a second Dytiscus species, also but from other elytra
discarded cubs’-toys, perhaps, littering her midden.
Behind the pub, weeks later, bidden and patient Joe Graham
joins us in vigil. …Then the haughs suddenly slough off
a river-riffle ribbon of otters - reel-off four quivering
rudders!
1983: Dytiscid Beetles in Redesdale
Page(s) 31
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