De-extinction Postcard
I have spent so many nights
worrying about losing bones, teeth,
hair, recovering a ring of tanzanite. As a child
I wanted to be a dinosaur, roaming the floodplains –
duck-billed, stout. Having survived, I would like to pull
carcasses out of sinkholes and set them to work, Run,
Spinosaurus, run! The problem with resurrections is there is still
all this life – unexplained bulbs in the flower beds, cabbage heads,
mud, mosquitoes foraging at dusk to smother all our celestial
striving. I’d miss bananas. I’d miss melancholy. Lazarus limped
home, but we know nothing of what happened in the soundless
dark. Only the rise, only the returning. I’m trying to hold
this late morning, these parched yellow flowers,
even the two dogs at my feet, synching heartbeats, who do not once consider the tragedy
of a day continuing without them.
To whomsoever this should reach:
I write from a town that no longer exists,
in a language whose final words have been carved
into a trunk of pylon. Send no rescue missions
for us. If you have known love, understand:
The view to infinity is marred by hedgerow,
a line of bedclothes drying. The going,
when it goes, is forever gone.
Living Through the Apocalypse
They will have us believe
we are waking to a garden
which is a parable a tea party
where some of us get cake and others
get sticks…
