Page 67 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
P. 67
II. Missive to Bartram
Hark, Puc Puggy! My dearest Flower Hunter,
How apt the name the Alachua gave you!
Ere you stride across the centuries to Florida,
to me, with stave in hand to fend off
wolves and panthers on my behalf,
I feel compelled to scrawl these warning lines.
Fear not for wolves—your Canus lupus is
long gone, extirpated. Your subtropical feline
of the coryii subspecies is not gone, but going;
seventy, at most eighty, now exist.
What an elysium it is, you wrote. Not so, friend.
The woeful truth is: We count your myriad creatures;
we put their names and populations on a list
labeled Endangered; we display their images
on posters emblazoned Extinct.
That tortoise called gopher? Endangered.
That species of jay...of azure blue color,
my heart throb of a scrub jay? Also endangered.
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