Читать книгу Nature Speaks - Дебора Кеннеди - Страница 14

Coevolution

Darwin walked beneath iron arches and crystal sky,

the dangerous, liquid scent of distant jungles

hanging heavy in the proper London air.

In Kew Gardens, the conservatory, a cathedral grand

dedicated to botany, he gazed upon the Star of Bethlehem,

an orchid, exiled from the heights of Madagascar.

Each petal carved from ivory’s gleam, blooming

in the velvet night. Beneath the celestial petals grow

strange spurs, nectaries, green whips hanging

twelve inches long, tips wet with juice, the honeyed lure.

From the negative, Darwin saw the positive.

He wrote, “Good Heavens, what insect could suck it?”

Only an insect with a proboscis, a nose improbable,

one-foot long. His revelation met with waves

of ridicule crashing from Britain to the Continent.

Laughter rippled through forty years until the night

an entomologist with animal eyes, silently waiting

high in the trembling jungle, captured the shadow

of the hawk moth. Its shaggy wings, eight inches wide,

beat through layered leaves following the scent of musk.

The hawk moth hovered before the radiant Star,

its slender snout coiled tight, unfurled its length,

probed down the orchid’s spur, sipped the nectar,

and bore away a fine coat of pollen. Darwin’s vision,

a spark through golden amber, orchid and moth in eager

embrace, two bound as one, across eons’ arc.