Resurrection Biology

Bring out the dead–the passenger
pigeon and Carolina parakeet,
the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo,
the mammoth still sleeping
in icy Neolithic dreams.

Unspool them in ribbons and splice
the shredded places with golden
genomic scrap, and if we are lucky
they’ll rise again, more substantial
than alchemy, more solid than ghosts.

Maybe a crooked wing, a halt
in the step, one blue eye where once
both were brown, but all the pieces,
new and old, must fit–no gaps, no holes,
no places we could slip through
like smoke and disappear inside
their …