So small?

and now someone has seen
the teeniest lizard there’s ever been
in existence, a gecko smaller
than my baby sister’s finger

and I’m wondering
if somewhere there could be
herds of tiny elephants,
giraffes and hippopotamus browsing

a grassy clearing in a forest
where sunlight washes over a splash
of green water and on the edge
thumb-size crocodiles snooze

while among the plants and shrubs
mini-geckos flicker elastic tongues,
catch flies that cloud the air
like specks of dust.

Copyright: first published in Wild!: Rhymes that Roar chosen by James Carter and Graham Denton (Macmillan Children’s, 2009), © Joan Poulson 2009, used by permission of the author

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Although many of Joan’s poems are in free verse, you can hear that they still use strong rhythms. Her similes and metaphors bring the ...

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About So small?

'So Small?' is a poem that began to come to me after reading about an extremely small lizard, a gecko, seen in the Amazon jungle for the first time by humans. Or by humans who could write about it. I began to wonder about other incredible things that might not yet have been seen. Some of those things might even be in our garden.

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