Those Stick Insects in the Sun

I wrote this poem about eight years ago. I’d forgotten until this morning tidying up my files on the computer I stumbled across it. It didn’t work as a poem. And we still have bananas.

THOSE STICK INSECTS IN THE SUN

Those stick insects in the sun
do not understand that in seven
& a half billion years this planet
will no longer exist - so the radio
states - nor do they comprehend
that in ten years time we could
have no bananas - so I heard
last week. My Grandmother had
a record with the tune ‘yes we have
no bananas we have no bananas
today’. You wound up the machine
& placed the needle gently down
& miracle, cracked music emerged.
Though they have ears these insects
would not hear it. Something about
their hearing being tuned to a different
pitch – as a stoat ignores a gun shot.
I wish I hadn’t heard so much. It
makes the world less full of miracles.