Poem by Maria Griffin
Thylacine
Not everyone made it through the ice. My ancestors were among the lucky ones. Back then, it was white everywhere you looked. Oceans frozen over, sheets of ice pressed down on the earth, ice covering the mountains, the valleys, the flatlands, and the deserts. It was still and quiet, but not silent; no, it wasn’t silent. Nature is a noisy thing, and mammoths don’t walk lightly. If you had been there, you might have heard screeches, howls, chirps, and hisses, as ancestors of creatures that walk and crawl the earth today went about their lives hunting prey, doing their best to survive, while the temperature slowly changed. Not everyone made it through, but some had been here since the Miocene. Fourteen thousand years ago, a mere blip in time. They left the ice and the mammoths behind. Small and innocent (now they seem), they walked straight into the mouth of the Holocene. If only they had known who the real enemy was, back then.
Art Information
- Photo of Thylacine with Distended Pouch (Adelaide Zoo, 1889); public domain.
Maria Griffin is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia, where she works and volunteers in the arts and disability sector. Her articles and creative nonfiction have appeared in StylusLit, Pink Cover Zine, Mask, and artshub. She spent seven years writing a personal blog called Blathering About Nothing. She is trying to read everything, but is way behind.
For more information, follow Maria Griffin on Twitter @ormaybejustrex.
