Splendid Poison Frog

Was it a cold December Wednesday
when you left?
A frosty, flinty, pin-point moment
that seals most pull-outs.
Silent like a hushed Mayday signal
reverberating in the ripples of a pond.
What time exactly
did you hop over
to where nowhere exists?
Did the sun flicker
at your vanishing act?
The way yellow convulses on a colour palette
when mixed with green
before turning blue.
Was it the hour of dusk,
your favourite hour,
when you looked your dashing, heart-throb best
skin, brilliant coral, eyes, kohl black.
A fungus with a long name
colonised your body.
A local phenomena, some said.
Like a cloud breaking-up
a balmy summer’s evening.
Did the next morning feel
like a fine after-showers morning?

Estimated Extinction date: 2020
Cause: Chytrid Fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis,)

Explain This

Lands maimed by croplands.\
Skies gashed by power-lines.
Trees usurped by roads.

The hacking blue
of desertification.
A planet’s broken palette.

Irrevocable scattering
of the gift of prãna.
Mounting figures of those last to last.

We witness, through
tight-lipped, narrow windows,
species vanishing.

In Vietnamese
the word for both
tree and sky is xanh.

Green and cyan in the same syntax,
a colloquy for Earth.
Life cherished against the bosom of a word.

Will our eyes
get used to the ghosts
of those no longer on the food chain?

A paw-print missing, a passerine
never moulting again, frogs sinking.
The pyramid poorer.

Phantom pixels
of those who’ve ceased to exist,
arranging and rearranging themselves,

acquiring enough pelt
to nudge our knuckles,
stir our conscience.

A tibia fossil gathering
moss and lichen.
Our hands empty.

prãna: life