Fiona Cartwright

The Conservationist’s Daughter

The sky opens and closes
around the stars, their light

landing on our tent with the brightness
of the extinct. I let you believe

I can keep them alive.
We walk the land’s edge

and you ask for choughs, waiting
for me to stretch feather and bone

from molecules drifting between my hands.
For you, my love, there will be choughs

and puffins, some, the black threads
of their flocks dwindling.

I will shape a great auk
from stardust, reknit its DNA, stitch

each cell into place. You wait
for my belly’s cornucopia

to swell with birds
as we lie conjoined on the airbed

your sister under my thinned skin
and I tell you I can birth anything.

Fiona Cartwright is a poet and conservation scientist. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Butcher's Dog, Magma, Mslexia, The Interpreter’s House and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her debut pamphlet, Whalelight, was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2019 and she tweets @sciencegirl73.