My Dear Fox

. . . I am rather low today about all my experiments,—everything has been going wrong—the fan-tails have picked the feathers out of the Pouters in their Journey home— . . . seeds will sink in salt-water—all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it . . .

—Charles Darwin, 17 May 1855 to W. D. Fox

When was it we first perfected the art       of netting beetles? Those dull classics lectures             at Cambridge, botany was certainly surer—a soft, yielding curve       of August days. Today is windowless             and gives no light, a lily leaning in the darkened wood. Can words ever fill       any void with meaning? Will the eggs float             on seawater? I am very anxious to see whether the eggs stand sea water. Even       the trees seem leafless with winter, contradictions             encumber every sense, the whine of silence inhabits every moment. I'm in those precious       seconds, perhaps, a paddler feeling he can             just make it, a beautiful purposeful wave of ellipses, curves and faint shapes. Nothing       has germinated, every lot of seeds has done             badly, nothing emerges on the broad lake beyond, my notes are strangers, a tangled noise       of bracelets designed in dreams. Possibilities             suggest complications. My dear Fox . . . Of course this note need not be answered, without       by a strange & favourable chance             you can someday answer it with the eggs.