Protozoa Haiku

The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history;
the use of the outer creation, to give us language
for the beings and changes of the inward creation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature


This pages features the first of my efforts to show the beauty and wonder of the creatures inhabiting the microscopic world in a form most suited to them, the haiku. To see the representata of these poems, please click on the title to see images, most of them housed at the excellent Microbial Digital Images Archives.

 

 

 

 

The Protozoa
Small creatures, living
out your busy lives, you know
not what you teach me.




Teuthophrys trisculca
Three limbed mystery,
Rarely cited, rarely seen
Miniature kraken.


 

Platycola
Sunken amphora,
Flick'ring carnation petals,
Pinked by Darwin's shears.

 

 

 

 

Unknown long-necked paramecium(?)
Your graceful spiral
dance, your long necked spin, no poem,
no photo captures.

You do not labor
to be beautiful; all my
still lifes are still born.

 

Trachelophyllum
Your neck's graceful curve
A shape as simply pleasing
As your small motions.

 

 

 

 

Stylonychia
Hair-limbed scurrier,
Flexing through the filaments,
You show Gaia's wit.

 

 

 

 

Opalina
Fringed flying carpet,
Green with golden eyelets, lost
In the frog's belly.

 

Vorticella
Hungry globule, mouth
Floating upward, voracious,
Leaps back out of fear.




 

Meade 9400 Microscope
Glass eyed metal tube,
Narrow and broaden my sight,
Show me hidden worlds!

 

Amoeba proteus
Unpredictable,
You alert us to all our
Possible futures.

 

 

 

 

Euglena
Bright-eyed but sightless,
Tongu�d slug twirls its tendril
Into the future.

 

Stentor coeruleus
O, that th'universe,
Azure infundibular,
Were as beautiful.










Protozoa Haiku Protozoa Links
Protozoa in Popular Culture
Music to Watch Protozoa By Protozoa Equipment and Books








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� 2007 Hermester Barrington




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