The archipelago
Sinks into the streets
As a coral reef comes bursting through
In a car full of merrymakers
Home from a seaside trip.
Pieces of coral reefs
Find new homes
New decorations
Dripping sick with salt
Wet from the sea
A lone Javan rhino finds a clump of new grass
To lean over on-
A well placed shot
And there’s death
parched with swollen thirst
at the crack of dawn.
The chinchilla damped in the snow-
shredded light moves across the terrain.
Soon enough, the cold boulders
grazing its trembling coat
will be replaced by clothes,
Glistening sidewalks and shops
shagging it out miserably
with electricity in miserable rains.
“Martha”-died on first Sept. 1914
In Cincinnati Zoo, USA.
The last passenger-
pigeon,
she died with no last note tied to her neck.
I look at the full moon
encasing me
in an eerie ivory
of remembrance.
And I know, what
being extinct means.
Often it means
being in a world
where animals are loved
for how much they means to us
and not for the joy of life.
Ungainly and dear to all-
Animals and humans alike.