Here to the left, is the room of small things, the few
we had time to gather. Although, in truth, almost
everything you will see here is small. This flower,
a violet, once carpeted the ground purple,
and next to it, notice that cluster of perfect
little blossoms, how they form a circle of Queen
Anne’s Lace, which once caught the sun from its long green stalks,
white heads humming with bees. We have one
example of a bee here, but sadly the tack
has damaged the soft fuzz of its back. Still, beside
the bee is a butterfly, again only one,
but it’s a Monarch, and worth seeing, with its gold
and black stained-glass spread of wings. Let’s move on now. Turn
right to check out our fish and our amphibians.
Yes, just a few fish and none very big, but note
the silvery overlap of their scales. And next
to them, our frogs. We have two if you count the toad.
We almost missed them because we were not paying
close attention to the rush of their vanishing.
But look over here at the snake with a frog half-
way down its throat, just two green legs showing. Ah, snakes
they slithered and coiled everywhere once, some thicker
than your arm, some finger-thin. But again, we have
only this one black snake on display. Still, what luck
to find a snake swallowing a frog, to pin up
on the wall as one! Here is our small bird corner.
The larger birds, eagles and hawks, are depicted
downstairs in the mural you’ll pass on your way out.
(stanza break)
But first, lean close to this tiny hummingbird’s once
emerald wings, now faded to gray, and, sad to say
its long bill was torn off when whoever found it
crammed it into his pocket. But we have a tit-mouse
and a chickadee, bright-eyed, common, and countless.
For some reason, we have pinned a bat skeleton
among the birds, although bats were mammals like us.
Still, note the way the bat has been displayed, to show
how like a human its body was, arms spread wide
to show the delicate membranes of both its wings,
its legs akimbo. I heard that bats spoke to each
other in full sentences, but that could be myth.
No one to ask now. Ah, here is a fine transition right
into insects, the primary food source for bats.
We have only a minute selection of what
were millions of these six-legged creatures. You must
strain to see, but I believe that might be a gnat.
Oh, those three in the bottom row, the ones with eight
legs, are really spiders. Well, that’s all we have here,
so let’s go downstairs, past the beautiful mural,
started by a woman who was still alive just
before there was nothing. She was very old, died
before she could complete her work, so as you see,
she painted mostly trees, because she wanted us
to imagine them, how their green branches feathered
the sky, before we murdered them, before they tore
up the earth with their dying. And though we can’t hear
it—she painted birdsong, birdsong, endless birdsong.
