Lessons From the Vanished Giant

I want to know
why the woolly mammoth’s coat
no longer brushes the cold wind—
why her bones lie beneath
permafrost silence,
instead of walking
beside her calf.

I want to understand
the final breath
of the short-faced bear,
its hunger lost
in a forest that changed
faster than its hunger could adapt.

I want to study
the curve of antlers
from the Irish elk,
that once gathered the sun.
Were they too grand 
for survival, or did beauty 
simply go out of style?

I want to read the soil,
core it down to truth
and reveal the buried record 
of what pollen drifted, 
what bloomed and blossomed,
what thrived or died,
through the last glimmers
of a dying epoch.

I want to see
through the eyes of the Clovis hunter—
was it reverence or desperation
that guided their fluted points
into the great beasts?

I want to follow the patterns of retreat,
not just of glaciers, but of life—
where saber-tooth faded,
where the ground sloth sank
into myth.

I want to learn
if extinction is always
a slow forgetting,
or sometimes
a single, sharp silence
in the dark.

I want to know
what vanished
with them—
not just the animals,
but the stories
we no longer tell
around the fire.

And most of all,
I want to learn
how not to repeat
their ending.