POETRY: DAVID WHITE

HYMN

​bow to the Passenger Pigeon
genuflect to the Great Cruising Auk
 
sing praises to the frogs that sing no more
the Rocky Mountain Grasshoppers
 
the Northern White
Rhinoceros
 
the Coral awash
in acidic seas
 
the Bramble Cay Melomys
first of the mammals
 
officially wiped out
February 18, 2019
 
by climate change
still unacknowledged
 
while ocean levels rise
like smoke
 
in ever burning
Australia
 
ululations trembling
through extinction’s heaven
 
let all their death throes
hymn celestial halls

David White was a participant in Renga: A Collaborative Poem (Brick Books 1980). In 1994, in completion of his Ph.D., he wrote “A Territory Not Yet On The Map:” Relocating Gay Aestheticism in the Age of AIDS. His first solo collection of poems is The Lark Ascending (Pedlar Press, 2017), followed by Local Haunts (Pedlar Press 2019). For many years he taught Theatre History and Writing at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.