We were smaller once.
Our bones thick, our breath heavy from hunts and hungers.
Still we distinguish the piss of humans from cats,
the mark of dogs from the musk of lovers.
In dreams, I smell brine and baleen, the slow drip of resin.
Mantis shrimp see more colors than any animal on earth.
We see blue and red and green, and call it a rainbow,
pity the dog with only yellow and blue.
Shadows play on the backs of our closed eyes.
There once were hippos and lions on Trafalgar Square.
Now the last male northern white rhino has died
under armed guard, unable to breed.
Marsh tits fly through a Paris airport, feast on our debris.
In Quedlinburg, a wooden house bears graffiti
“No Hope” and lovely cakes of six layers nearly hide
racist caricatures on antique coffee tins.
We marvel and mock the feathered dinosaur.
The browning camellia blossom, fallen mid-storm,
with folds of pink and ochre, long past prime,
calls my fingers to learn the geography and beauty in dying.
