endangered

i remember learning about animals
their bright colors and habitats,
the categories
of their appetites,
and the different climates,
places where nothing else
could survive, adaptations
of the smallest kind.
such order.
and the animals,
endangered,
so simple
that we should care for their
unique and breathing bodies,
that we should keep them here,
that all that life
should continue
a hundred million years from now
or close enough to forever
to not quite matter.

and i was so young i barely knew
the heart that beat in my own chest,
the body that was mine, and was
not mine, i was very much
a small animal
learning other animals,
and on the sheet
was a photograph
of a nameless beast
and the children said the numbers
like prayers, writing the reports
in a hazy blue-green love
with clear, timid, love, calling
they must be saved