From the Fishouse

Ours is the curse of the blighted touch
that wilts every green shoot and flower
we mean to admire, keep, re-create

or improve. New Zealand’s Huia Bird,
prized for her scimitar beak
and pleated Victorian petticoat tail,

was hunted extinct except for this
diving-belled brooch and sad hatband,
fast falling to dust

in the Smithsonian. We love what we love
in the scientific way, efficient, empiric,
vicious, too much

and always we touch it, our breath
blooming algae on the walls of Lascaux,
shimmering in acid-etch green.