One:Anatiferous

The atomic age is infamous for its casualties. Not so, the atomist age. The dangers of the exothermic nuclear reaction are widely acknowledged (and allegedly harnessed), yet the diminishment of generative, imaginative, and linguistic energy due to methodological consolidation is just as harmful, and more insidious.

Whatever became of the anatiferous? That most delightful family of tree which beget and harbored the most resolute of barnacles (the toughest and saltiest nut to crack) which, in season, erupted into vibrant geese and/or ducks. Lost, lost, lost! Savagely throttled at the newly vigilant hands of empiricism into the also-abandoned ether, the bewilderingly not-even-metaphorical, the linguistically artifactual. The test, the observation, the agreement, the loss of possibility, etc etc.

After much deliberation and negotiation, we are left only with eggs. And not even eggs of massive terrible lizards, though occasionally those of lethal or psychotropic reptiles/amphibians, but usually eggs for salads or cakes. Which admittedly are delicious, though profoundly less magical, less transmogriphic than the anatiferous. Our loss of concept reflects a loss of humanity, as Francis Bacon realized too late, in his own invernal struggle with poultry exactitude.

Citations

• Eggs
• Ether