Above are Colorado's mammal species which are threatened, endangered, or of special concern. Each animal is rendered in charcoal on recycled canvas and photographed across Colorado in the empty habitats, under threat, which hold the potential to support the various lifestyles and niches of each creature.
From the perspective of the beast, under man:
O master of me
Man! Taker of breath and bread;
Mountain track and tree, trophied living - lorded head.
I take up weeping for the pasture wilderness as dirge.
Heard less is the lowing Bison herd, I dread
your doing - unmaking - as both bird and beast have fled;
Are dead.
I now confess
To bow to less a festered thought:
Smeared I see your name on crease and cave as dress
resting blue. The fame you forgot.
Renown of story read, tail of unbound bone,
balanced upon precipice: purposed and caught.
Before your floor and chimney grown
And midriff break break between us - stress of mammon wrought,
I’d speak my piece and lie in it.
For sake of my own home.
I drowned in ice.
Fire kissed my house of pine.
A crown of wire wreaths the place dried for dust drawn spider lace did recite,
“Plight by earth’s crack and crooked smile!” As you said, “Parasite!”
I cannot speak, but I can tell that some would listen still.
But most would see the prairie weak and wait for one to till.
Frown for bower spent.
Charyless wheels carved the quarry’s shame.
Chasers bear (down on theirs) extravagant.
You took too much - judges of bloated reign.
Carry less and reach less quick effects
for fonder memories I will name.
Since some quills render
- feathered, bent -
ekined fingers victored retrospec
A lender’s realm greyed and tame.
For if not yet wrecked, and on the fence,
is that rod that came,
the play descript has trod and left
without respect or recompense.
Sand a’sift am I.
A statistic slipping,
falling, ripping clean.
As hourglass sides of man’s design squeeze a steeper mean.
For voel edges I cannot climb: fuel wetted loop.
Yet the timer’s set south of fret within an arm’s span
or unbent leg. I beg.
“O dappled troupe, coop as seldom seen.
Band, root in shackled truth as hand outstretched
to flip the former scheme.