Node

By Dylan Fritz

There was no breath in the world
when it formed, just like how the last
Pyrenean Ibex, Celia, was killed by a 
falling tree in Northern Spain, 

bones crushed beneath two tons of wood but 
I imagine most of the weight must have come
from the leaves—their clogging, turning nature. 

DNA samples stolen from her dying breaths,
she’s cloned three years later and is alive
for seven minutes before dying from a lung defect.  

Maybe if we were anything but dust 
the clone would have lived, 
but the Pyrenean Ibex went extinct twice instead.  
And we don’t even know

the type of tree that fell on Celia, 
laden with snow. Rotted knowing 
it killed the last of a species. What a
weight that must’ve been.