So smart and masterly you’d been,
you women and you men
who’d brought us back: we thylacines
and woolly mammoths, then
the quagga and bush moa. All
you people said, “Amen!”
But after just a few short years
we had gone extinct again.
We’d walked in bliss or died in line
with natural selection
or staggered about, blind to the purpose
of our resurrection.
The climate wasn’t right, there was
no room in any zoo.
The world had changed and there was nix
that anyone could do.
That didn’t stop you, though, from bringing
us to life once more.
How could we former fauna live
as we had lived before —
to hunt, inhale the air (polluted),
munch grass or sprint or prance.
You grieved and, with your pretty planet,
had a last romance.
It isn’t quite so dire, though —
you’ve cloned a ferret. Yup!
Elizabeth Ann you’ve christened her.
Yes, things are looking up:
first time you clever clogs had ever
revived a threatened species,
a brown-eyed slender little soul
with rounded ears. You see she’s
quite pleased inside her hole or preying
on a prairie dog
and, with her blackish mask and nose,
as eager and agog
as you are of the future of
the species you revive —
or at least this one. If she does well,
we’ll give you a high five.
___________________________
Appeared in Orbis.