Mythium, The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Cultural Voices / Issue: Vol. 1, No. 2, (2010)

Extinction

                                                              In memory of Michael Jackson

There’s silence
In the music of clear-cut rainforests
Drowned voices of middle passage
Bullet riddled walls of Iraqi villages
Bodies of bushmen unable to dodge
Piercing lead while fleeing their land

Saxophones scream as tusks are cleaved from
Elephant, rhino and walrus
Drums thunder with the beating of seal skulls
Chainsaws crescendo as ancient forests fall

An elegy is written for these felled trees
Drowned voices, pock marked walls
Howls of men, crying land, dying beauty

Remembering extinction as a play, a poem, a joke
A break of stanza, a breath, an exhalation
Will not reverse volcanic destruction
Until greedy jackals love affair
With fossilized relics and carbon fuel
Becomes a Bear-Stearns moment

There are awards for best documentary
Anthologies for preserving thoughts
Ribbons, medals for warriors
Citations for heroism and survivors
Statues for fallen heroes

How will we honor the extinction of curative plants,
Elephants, lions, gorillas, rhino, tigers, whales?
In South Africa, when the last lion near
Howick was killed, the Impofana River
Was renamed Lion’s River
What event portends our next rivers name?
The Caribbean Sea was named after the Caribs, an
Extinct indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest
When this magnificent rainforest has disappeared
Will we rename the fields, Michael?
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Copyright © 2009 by F. Geoffrey Johnson   All rights reserved
First published in Mythium, The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Cultural Voices / Issue: Vol. 1, No. 2, (2010)