We leave these
echoes
for our cousins
across the
vast salt sea
Messages and markers
to follow
when the voices of
long ancestors call them back
to join the
bones of the plesiosaur,
megalodon, archaeopteryx
We watched flowers
erupting into
wonder among the
many shades of green
New feather-winged and
fur-bearing hooves or
clawed running creatures
unfold from the ruin of
darkness, ice and fire
while honoring our dead
already waiting in
the dreaming
The crush of
plastic and
poison and
garbage and
two-leggeds
killing us for sport
and food and
to fill the yawning void
where their mercy and
compassion should
reside
Overwhelms
because we were
impediments to dams for
powering polluting cities
of destruction
rivers of chemicals flowing in
streams through our
failing waters
called us to the
diaphanous silence of
the dreaming
We follow our gentle
younger friends
the baiji,
recently cast
into eternity
No young are
spawned in
the dreaming
No mates are sought as
moon phases shift through
far long memories of
pure, slow waters and
clear, fresh skies float
through bones decaying
into eternity
Nothing new emerges in
the dreaming,
only long memories and the
slow, ancient ebb of
forgetting
~ for the Chinese paddlefish, declared extinct 1/8/20
https://apple.news/APNME8qbcTfCI3TdbDpOTdA
~ K. E. Bartholomew