THINKING OF EXTINCTION
Charlie Clark

Its survivors come to mind, green, winged creatures.
Not insects themselves, but something larger,

entrusted with understanding the change, and so
with mourning it. Call them empathetic guardians,

rather like angels, only corporeal, and not at all
comprised of the spirits our bodies once contained,

which should be flooding other dimensions
by now if one theory has it right, or else

returned to earth, inside its newest ruling class,
and, driven by their bodies’ protocols,
eating the sudden mountains of our old lives.