Platypus (BioScience, September 2020)

Authors: Rob Jackson

Platypus

To be frank-

enstein, he is no beauty,

a fraud stitched together

with spare parts and baling twine

duck's bill, beaver's tail

turtle's webbed feet

an odd Pygmalion ideal.

Zoologist George Shaw

examined him first in the bowels

of the British Museum,

laid out on towels,wrote dryly what he saw:

"most extraordinary the beak of a Duck engrafted

on the head of a quadruped."

Animals were his friends.

I feel for him.

He can't see or hear underwater,

just uses his sensitive bill

to touch the germ of something soft,

a worm, or a mate.

In courtship they swim perfect circles,

in synchronized ballet.

Pay heed.

He is dangerous when wet.

Pull him close and poison spurs

give weeks of pain.

Set free he makes amends,

extends arrow-like,

sun glints on his back,

last bubble rising,

and descends.