© Astrid van der Pol
Philip Henry Gosse wrote field guides to beaches and tide pools. His vivid illustrations of jelly fish and anemones, along with his invention of the seaweed aquarium and first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, drew people to the beaches. Though Gosse was deeply religious, he trusted Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ because he observed similar patterns in marine biology. In ‘Omphalos’ Gosse argued that God created the world in medias res. If Adam has a belly-button but no mother, God could put fossils into rock.
You are a rare bird fluttering, wing
after wing glimpsed, gone.
The dark suit, the tunic,
the firmly parted, oiled hair
and chin strap beard disguise
your posture, which says,
I’d like to fly. A scientist of bird
temperaments — fierce, fearless,
mischievous, shy — and bird actions:
their work, cries, and songs,
you were born into zoology
and painting. There you are
in Kew Gardens, holding hands
with your wife, walking
through irises and tulips.
Train-taker, beach-visitor,
worrier, provider, quirky
medicine zealot. I glimpse you
like the flickering blue head
of a chestnut-bellied cuckoo
only to lose sight of you.
Omphalos creator, you stop time.
Metaphor binds broken
bits of lives, like spider threads
in a hummingbird’s nest.
But when we really miss
what’s lost, when we are in
a middle space — liminal,
anthropologist call it —
be vigilant; metaphor can trick us.
Omphalos is startling,
a belly-button theory: fossils
without anemones,
birdlike prints without
amphibians shifting.