invisibility is purest safety
An empty glade,Agape, on a map
A flash of life without a name
A place with no road in, no road out,
Where lines of disguise on my eyes
Blend me into borders unseen,
uncountable and I’m countless, lost,
unidentified, on no-one’s official list.
Next best to live as a rumour
A shy stir among undergrowth,
A shadow in the forest’s flow
A hush around the campfires
Where there are no answers,
Uncertain subject of sightings,
alive in endless opportunities
Blurred photos of ifs, maybes.
But how fatal to be a fact
To count my days, numbered
Entered, encoded and named,
Protected on your database
Till a finger hovers over delete,
And you label me ‘Asian unicorn’,
Why, the very name is extinction!
Notes:
The soala (pronounced 'sowla') was discovered in 1992 in the borderland between Vietnam and Laos. Due to its extreme rarity, it has been named 'the Asian unicorn'. It is threatened by de-forestation and habitat loss. The most optimistic estimates put the population at several hundred, but a few dozen is a far more likely number.
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