Meanwhile I Am Preparing Poem by Ed Skoog

Meanwhile I am preparing
a way to miss the exiting animal
grizzly bear whooping crane
the slow hesitant and administrative desert tortoise
that I will probably outlive or my son will
already I see that my death

will or will not be like extinction
if only in the sense
that there was some noise and then there was no noise

yet why when I am grieving
do I insist the dead are inexact
without specifying how

extinction the bad trophy
and this is a good knot for holding a horse
and this is the desert's smell after a good rain

and here is the canyon where we stop for love
and these are the red and orange seeds of the ocotillo
and these are the spines of the pencil cholla

and here is the debris and here is the rain
and here is how to live with almost nothing
and beyond, even as the rattlesnake

takes its shade from my long standing
even as the tarantula goes to the highway
at sunset and is not struck