Here’s Chris’s poem from Monday night and the poem that inspired it, ‘Design’ by Robert Frost

For a moth – unnamed
by Chris York

Before the flowers came, your ancestors saw
no more than blue, green and near violet light
400 million years ago, a secret rainbow in white.
They saw UV bright white patterns
on bodies and wings of their partners.

Then flowers came, longing for insects
and guiding them to their pollen, with nectar treats,
exploiting them to pollinate their white,
yellow or purple flowers with nectar guides
so clear to those with UV vision.

Some spiders are partial to nectar,
supping it from open nectaries for energy,
risking their lives to predators:
wasps, mantids, toads, and birds.

Misumena vatia learnt to hide,
choose white, yellow and pink flowers
and change their body colour to match.
To become UV bright white, concealed
in the nectar guides from wasps.

And you didn’t see that fat dimpled spider
who found you rather tasty.

 

by Chris York

 

Design

by Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.