An inordinate fondness for beetles
In the cabinet, staged on slips:
Wallace’s Longhorn Beetle,
Darwin’s Stag Beetle,
CERAMBRYX, Linnaeus 1758,
black entomological pins
skewer them to cards, inscribed
with genus, species – a scuttle
of capricorn beetles
with the name of each collector
of the type specimen Indian inked.
No sign of the Devil’s
Coach-Horse or the Rainy Bat,
still less the Woodland Dor
Beetle seen in the Forest of Dean
waving its violet-hued legs
in defiance of taxonomy.
Written following a Poetry School workshop at Manchester Museum and published on line on Campus.