The Ghost Variations

We think it’s time humans

Started considering

Yourselves to be hybrids,

Carrying genetic

Traces of all your

Cousin populations

Of meandering apes

You reproduced with, then

Also out-reproduced.

On Galveston Island,

When sampled, coyotes

Turned out partly red wolves.

The biologist said,

They harbor ancestral

Variation, this ghost

Variation, which we

Thought had been extinguished,

Extinct from the landscape.

Oh, you, too, yes, you too

Harbor your ancestral

Ghost variations, and

Many new ghosts as well,

Us very words ourselves,

For starters, words for ghosts

And wolves and ancestors,

And so much more besides.

Every conversation

Floats ghost variations,

And everything you know

Becomes the ghosts you are.