He knelt curious beside the particular,
venerating the small,
zu den Sachen selbst:
a beetle’s iridescent back,
the radiance of a coral,
one frond uncurling in Borneo’s damp,
and in the stunning showing he made
the whole earth legible, affordable,
not as argument but as attendance,
quiet as a hand held open,
and we who watched these scenes
and heard his voice learned slowly
that the moss,
the reef,
the arctic fox turning white against the snow
were not elsewhere but here,
only as far as vision and touch,
not spectacle but kin magnified,
and this planet, he thought,
this singular,
irreplaceable, stunning orb,
was never given to us (like Genesis says),
but gives to us, holding us in embrace,
as a home not by title but by breath,
the only address we will ever know.

For David Attenborough on turning 100.

 

8/5/2026