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# ode to a tartigrade
- URL: https://poetry101.love/ode-to-a-tartigrade/
- Published: 2026-11-08T19:27:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-08T19:28:06.000Z
- Description: by Dayna Patterson
- Author: Melissa Anderson

dearest wondrous water bear  
o mighty moss piglet  
you are my favorite   
micro-animal  
there should be a holiday   
in your honor  
and why not today  
we could call it  
tardigrade appreciation  
day and celebrate  
with tardigrade T-shirts  
and tardigrade earrings  
and moss conservation  
yesterday when I saw  
the jiggle of my ass  
in the mirror I thought  
of your body rolls  
on rolls like a fat  
baby how you waste  
zero seconds  
on body shame  
spend your days  
swimming in a bead  
of water held aloft  
by a tuft of sphagnum  
moss your snout-like  
mouthpart sucking up  
any delicious morsel  
your adorable  
spidery toes  
wafting you forward  
in your aqueous  
world darling  
kleiner Wasserbär  
*Macrobiotus sapiens*  
I adore the whole  
half millimeter  
of your extremophile  
existence how you  
can make a home  
anywhere Antarctica  
deep sea vents  
mud volcanoes  
sand dunes  
but prefer a bed  
of moss don’t we  
all or lichen or  
leaf litter how you  
can survive via  
cryptobiosis  
curling up like  
an armadillo  
for as long as   
thirty years  
without food  
or water and when  
wet arrives you  
unfurl how I want  
to be tough and  
indestructible  
like you and though  
you seem squishy  
are actually  
encased in cuticle  
and lay your eggs  
in that shed shell  
confident in the  
promise of seed  
you evolved  
before us before  
dinosaurs and will  
likely outlive us  
and who better   
to inherit the earth  
and maybe the moon  
too after the spacecraft  
Beresheet crash landed  
there in 2019  
with thousands   
of water bears  
on board  
some kind god  
built you to last  
to feed and float  
to dry out and fast  
to inspire in us a  
meekness we tune  
our love to micro  
strive to be milder  
mossier versions  
of ourselves