Poetry

Last Boat to Extinction

Derek Fenton

 

If they could, what might Dodos be thinking

as their comrades faded in Mauritius?

What of Tasmanian Tigers’ precious

last moments of winking and blinking

in the face of the Europeans’ guns?

What of doomed dinosaurs in the dark?

Their only hope a Jurassic Park

reinvigorating daughters and sons.

 

What of us, the last of the Rhodesians?

Comforting one another beside a grave:

clinking glasses afterwards at the wake,

defying tumours, murmurs and lesions.

But being Zimbabweans will not save

us from the narrowing boat rides we must make!