Extinct
by Lee Varon
“So many languages have/ fallen off the edge of the world” -Lucille Clifton
This is where they used to roam
the ivory billed woodpecker
through mangroves their missing poem--
a tinny trumpet flicker--
fallen off the edge of the world
into this shimmering void
a silence unfurled
into another forever destroyed.
100,000 thousand souls overdosed
last year. Who remembers the shape of their hands
their lost poems that feed vanishing ghosts
the stars that braided strands
of their hair? In 1935, someone recorded the ivory-billed bird
& what of the others? Unheard.
Listen to the poem here.
This is where they used to roam
the ivory billed woodpecker
through mangroves their missing poem--
a tinny trumpet flicker--
fallen off the edge of the world
into this shimmering void
a silence unfurled
into another forever destroyed.
100,000 thousand souls overdosed
last year. Who remembers the shape of their hands
their lost poems that feed vanishing ghosts
the stars that braided strands
of their hair? In 1935, someone recorded the ivory-billed bird
& what of the others? Unheard.
Listen to the poem here.
 | Lee Varon is a social worker and writer. She is a co-editor of Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and Those Touched by Homelessness and author of the children’s book: My Brother is Not a Monster: A Story of Addiction and Recovery published in 2021. |