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first
published in Poetry News, summer 2006 and
shortlisted
for the Hamish Canham award;
in
collection, Message of Change, 2008,
Oversteps
Press, ISBN 978-1-906856-01-4
Eliphibian
What if the small
black dot in the heart of the glop —
which
even on tadpole terms seems unlikely to prosper
left
out high and all but dry on the hillside
like
a troubling child — were
to bud in all directions:
the
bulbous head blossoming two ears
lavish
as palm-heads, the tail springing a tassel,
the
folds at the edge of the mouth thrusting out tushes
the
snout uncurling a trunk thick as liana
and
as the bulk of the thing heaved to its feet
stepping
out of discarded frills of jelly
it
let loose out of that pink-tipped, pliant bassoon
triumphant
blasts as its great feet quivered the grass.
Suppose
it twice the size of anything seen
in
our diminished days, as if the bones
of
a mastodon uncovered on a beach
by
the wash of tides were to take new flesh, its hide
smooth
as butter, green and glistening as olives ...
What
if this new-spawned wonder, scattering sheep,
thudded
down to the small white tourist town
turning
all heads from tea-towels printed with doggerel,
tartan
teapots, pottery seals —
the
nemesis that all had been vaguely expecting
there
in the carpark stuffing shrubs into its maw
before
it waddled off to give the loch
its
newest monster, capsized the small boats
tethered
alongside the pier. Cameras clicking:
no-one
knowing in the slightest what else to do.
A C Clarke
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