THE SIXTH EXTINCTION
CHASITY HALE
This is where we begin: in a cozy wood
of colossal trees whose crowns drink in
the coastal fog that cloaks them
like a veil. Before us lies a fallen log—
born out of the last disaster. Its trunk:
lichen-layered. Its branches: broken,
mangled and moss-covered.
Deadwood: home. Its big body
like a whale carcass: a bounty
of nutrients, an island of abundance,
decomposing for centuries.
The sweet smell of rotting
fills our nostrils. Its enormity
and endless end remind us
of our brevity.
Soft-shoeing on the forest floor,
we hope to leave nothing
but footprints on the damp earth
from which the shallow roots
of redwoods—and we—spring,
according to whatever you believe.
Science says that the elements
that we are, are the same as those
buried deep in the planet’s hot center.
Scripture says she is bone of his bones
which means she too is dirt.
Somewhere landfills lay away waste
and leak methane, flares burn
in oil fields, and bombs drop
on these sacred lands
adding more carbon than the trees
can scrape from the sky—
the particles to live on forever
in the soil and the bodies and
the blood of the future.
This is where we end:
At the edge of the world
on a cliffside
before a known unknown,
watching steep waves pulled
by the milky white sun
fall over themselves and break
at our feet as we wonder:
What beautiful thing will come next,
when the next extinction comes
when all this goes away
and we go back to the burning
or whatever waits for us?
Chasity Hale is a poet, essayist, and journalist in San Francisco. Her work has been published in the American Poetry Review, SWWIM, NPR, The San Franciscan Magazine, and elsewhere.