Webster’s doesn’t define ‘Endling’
yet
but Robert Webster
– no relation –
coined it
twenty years ago
in trying to define
the last of a line.

It is strange
that we as a culture
have not yet named
this thing we are so especially good
at creating:
orphans
extinctions
obsolescence.

Destruction
is our stock in trade.
You’d think
we’d have our fifty words for snow
all wrapped up
in fifty different pretty bows.

And we do have the word
now.
I’m just surprised
we have not jumped at the chance
to own it;
to know at last
what we are,
as we head toward
our deaths as this group
or that.

It should be some sort of a relief
to at least
finally have a name for us
as we wriggle our way
to the end.