It’s surreal to sit with my son
and listen to the whippoorwill
as we talk about its extinction.
The lonely call
fervent then fading.
Repeat.

We watch bats dip down
to drink from the pond,
disrupting the mirrored
sunset across its surface,
and I think of their fate too.
I don’t have the heart
to share more hopeless
facts with a person whose
future rests on this
crumbing foundation.

His excitement to hear
the whippoorwill and
reassurance at least
we have this moment
in our memories,
a deduction
beyond his years,
fills me with a
desperate kind of love,
a touch of hope,
and deep aching despair.