Beginning with a Line by Eugenio Montejo

In the lost land of my absent family,
I hear a bell ringing. It’s a bell ringing
in the dark morning of a world long gone
a bird singing from a branch that swings
and creaks in a forgotten century
it’s birdsong that chimes like a near
or distant bell    and it’s a voice that speaks
from the lost land of being and memory
where a vanished family lives   it’s a word
composed of two syllables that breathe
in the soft light of this gray morning
on which I am born: Dearson, it sings,
bell-like in resonance and clarity, Dearson,
it rings like a bird on a branch in the wind,
and I cannot speak to this voice   to this bell
swinging in the light of the vanquished past
to this birdsong that fills me with joy
and sorrow.

Endangered

Facts teach us how we live

Yet the Dusky Seaside Sparrow
keeps its secrets: thirteen mystics
in retreat at Cape Canaveral

The Black-footed Ferret withdraws
from the Great Plains: ghostly
voyager

The Snail Darter dives under the Tellico
—kamikaze charge!

In Texas, the oil derrick is declared God

Phacelia, vanishing shadow on the salt
mountain, you weave a mourning cloak
for Utah

And you, Lotis Blue, what butterfly change
will rescue California?

Kauai oo, extinction adorns you with consonants.