By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA
the scream
of a red-tailed hawk
over the wood
where dozers wait—
my silent cry an echo
the giraffe
earns a place
on the Red List—
Gaia’s ghost
haunts my dreams
stacking stones
to build a cairn . . .
balancing
Earth’s bones,
I awaken to vertigo
fifty years
from discovery
to extinction—
a Pagan reed-warbler
sings in my heart
4% survived
the Permian extinction,
giving rise
to all that lives . . .
and to my flightless hope
~Ribbons 13:1, Winter 2017