Passenger pigeon & eons
are barreling forward. Before the wedding,
our graves pre-purchased, vanishing a gift
you say we should try to savor.
Two children, should we have them,
we’ve named ahead of time
for the freed slave who called the adhan
& a king who spoke the language
of every creature, animal or jinn.
Should we have them?
There are still those who remember
when our creekside apartment
was an ecotone, oakbrush unchewed
by goats who today crowd my window,
trimming the reach of wildfires
we've come to expect. Sleep
is a minor death, a rehearsal in believing
in some certain after. The redwoods,
keeping watch or score. Who was the last
among us to see prophets in a dream?
Mine long since privatized, mausoleums
of oft-polished bones, pinned wings
with a surmised sense of sky.
The cost of faith is the molting of memory.
Years from now, earth all but effigy,
the anthropologists will find us,
our pixel-laden grins ossified
behind glass. A tragedy began.
A tragedy is beginning.
When will the tragedy begin?