IMPOVERISHMENT

Sunrise on an empty mountain,
the animal paths overgrown long ago.
Grass thickens in the wagon ruts,
fence posts topple across the valley.
Nothing much left to enclose.

The book of fin, wing and hide is closed.
Each of its whale, cockatiels and tigers,
and the world's long line of hungry children
gone,
labeled "species impoverishment."
Roped off, ghettoed and zooed,
they disappeared like a swarm of cosmic frictions
nobody wanted.

Bonfires commemorate,
the surveyors designate, naturalists record,
and one stops to gaze for the beasts:
what it must have been to dwell on the trees,
breathing          seeing        then closing the eyes       for a moment
only to return to the same spot in the leaves.

First published in Amicus