Whenever a species gets stubbed out like this,
I feel the border of our lives is fraying:
the map of the sea yanked blank in one corner.
Sometimes I think we're holding the diameter
of the earth in our hands—
an elastic band, stretched tight—
and we're living in the years
before it snaps back
and tosses animals and trees and us away.
Maybe we should write a letter to those people of the future:
Here is the earth. Love it for us.
It's hard to believe, but we loved it, too.