In the last few weeks, so many new diagnoses:

The Chiriqui Salamander, The Sponge Crab,

an inch-long species of Amazonian fish that doesn’t even have a name yet.

A tree in the Sumatran rainforest that had been standing there so long it could have

been named by Adam, but wasn’t.

The Leafhopper wriggled out of the shadow of his more famous cousin.

A lily as wide as a crater exists.

And a frog like a Christmas light.

And three breeds of scorpion who’ve helped revive the Latin tongue.

And that’s not all. Since we moved May 5th to the last of November,

glaciers, barren old matriarchs from Bible times, have begun birthing mastodon

pups. The soft muzzles of woolly rhinos

like something you could slip your foot in to keep warm.

The name for these babies is necrofauna,

though really they’re sleeping, dreaming peacefully

and deeply, their long L’Oréal lashes cinched

with mud from a deep, deep strata.

This isn’t real, of course.

Nothing is: reverse births,

animal inventions. No ghosts,

no ruins, only mirages

the earth half-remembers,

the life flashing before its eyes a flood.

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Patrick O'Reilly is a poet, critic, and archivist from Renews, NL, now living in Montreal. His first chapbook, A Collapsible Newfoundland, was published by Frog Hollow Press in 2020.