after “Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane” by Kenzie Allen
The pterosaurs know nothing of life
today. That is, they know water
and membrane and flight, not the metal
drain, or the electric fence, or
the black well in the desert. They don’t
know all the ways a person can ruin,
or all the things ruining us. How thin
a sheet of plastic seems
compared to the angiosperms.
Past creatures needed nothing
of artifice, immaterial illusion—
just the endless cycle of returning
to earth, swallowed and swallowing
whole. Their four-fingered
wings no longer fit in our digital
hands. How many years until
they are gone, until even
the earth is a memory.
As though we are the only creatures
who know the muffled shriek
of loneliness. If only
they could see us now,
using their old bones to kill
new flesh, blood turned bile,
black. Perhaps we will live
to see the comet, that brief
wide-lipped undoing of it all,
memorialized in unknowing
fear. That gleaming light,
low on the horizon. Look up.
