An island drifts in time as much as sea,
a cradle of experiment and chance.
Here, isolation writes its laws unseen
each ridge, each cave, a separate dance.

From aeons grew the new and strange,
feathers flew, shells raised as shields,
songs evolved in sparrow’s range
no continent would ever yield.

But tides are fickle books of grace,
and wind forgets what wings once said.
Extinction hums a hollow bass
Through forests dark as arcadia’s dread.

What can be pressed in stone but shape?
What dream survives the buried bone?
Who now remembers, past escape,
the dodo’s song, now absent tone?

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Only the island
quiet and spare
holds its song
in fossilised air

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