Hour of the Ghost Dance

by David Cope

No more will the scioto madtom
swim in Ohio’s Big Darby Creek,

gone are the ivory-billed woodpecker,
Backman’s warbler never to sing again,

gone three species of pearly mussels,
the flat pigtoe mussel, southern acornshell,

stirrupshell lost among the 36 mussels &
70 freshwater snails gone, gone forever,

bridled white-eye, Little Mariana fruit bat,
San Marcos gambusia, plants they pollinate,

plants they reseed, all lost, lost forever, all
thru heavy hands crown-of-creation madness,

the age now a time of fleeting souls never
to return, superstorms raking coasts, drought

borne of Hetch-Hetchy presumptions, fires
leaping over mountains, ancient sequoias

licked by flames, volcanoes spitting fire,
thousands dead weekly—ghost dance hours,

sunset hours, time of the fleeting stars
whirling in ever-turning ever-burning sky.