Thylacine
How curious,
this marsupial misfit,
lost to us
before we knew what we had.
The ghost in convict stripes,
wrongly accused of woolly slaughter;
ripper of lambs and
culler of calves.
A possum in wolf’s clothing,
the slinking pouched prowler,
hyena-sloped and loping
with geriatric stiffness.
Back banded, ‘tiger’ branded
with black on tan
and a reputation to match.
Ill deserved, but too late
to be sorry, too late to save.
No more shocking
glimpses in gum-tree
scrubland, scrubbed free
of its native spark and
replaced with startling efficiency.
Vanished; but only just
remembered, leaving its mark
on an island’s arms, on beer bottles,
on fusty, dusty skins
and broken bones and
on the flickering footage of
the last of her kind,
gaping impossible angles and
pacing on Hobart concrete,
the final heartbeat of a species
snuffed out with her.
Richard Rintoul