And Then We Came

 

Tell the stories of all who have been lost,

the poet said, and so I think of them,

the nameless ones I did not know,

already gone, and the many

who are right now in danger of

passing from the earth: the orca, the rhino,

the mountain gorilla, the red panda.

All their stories, of life and death,
 are much the same:

they lived in a wild
and bountiful garden,

and then we humans came.