Umwelt

With each extinction comes the loss of an umwelt, the world as experienced by a particular organism.

The phalanx of hyenas are hard-starred eyes and glittered bone,

jokers with coal-rimmed teeth,

spotted trumpeters,

scavengers of light.

Lions tawny-full and languid

rumble in chest-pulses and heat-tingles,

simmering milk,

yellow-limbed adrenaline.

The swift-gray lupine pack

swells, cold and playful,

compressed webbed melancholic,

ravishing raptured teeth.

Listen to the myths, the blood, the howls,

the vibrations, the magnetic fields, the dense sticky roars,

the unraveling confining shrinking shrieking silent

space.