"I thought poetry was Dead" . . . Oct. 18, 2020

my neighbor across the street joked late to gather his mail I laughed and waved placed tomorrow’s poem in the box on Poetry Rock and remembered the pair of books stolen from it two assaults on it the original torn off and stolen the new one kicked and damaged and poems left wind-scattered homeless

I thought of poachers with machetes sawed-off tusks carcasses left to shrivel and rot

I thought of buffalo wolves and Tasmania

the whine of bullets bloodied beasts the short shudder of death

only endangered I finally said but knew this was a species that must learn to survive in the shrunken shadows of a deforested world