There’s gift-stalls galore outside the wild and hilly

Monteverde Forest. I buy a saffron

amphibian, sculpted in glass, from the guy that crafts them.

“What species is it?” I ask. His smile goes chilly.

“Is Golden Toad. He no more around.”

He knew them as a boy and recounts the thrilling

jackpot glitter of frogs in the fern-leaf frilly

puddles of April that made their spawning grounds.

Extinction struck. Climate’s the culprit, it’s reckoned.

A shriek from a startled bird reverberates shrilly

around the reserve. It stops. Oblivion beckons

a world that’s lost a coin so unmistakeable.

The bubble-wrap wad he packs round the knick-knack seems silly,

a conceit in these times when entire species’ are breakable.