The Tracks We Leave: Poems On Endangered Wildlife Of North America
by Barbara Helfgott Hyett
Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Ordered according to moments in the life cycle - birth, juvenile behavior, courtship, mating, feeding and hunting, aging, and death - the poems depict mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, insects, and arachnids. Each is accompanied by an illustration by Robert W. Treanor of the animal in the wild, and all recreate what is essentially fleeting: the complex beauty of one of nature's creations. Interspersed among the poems are verse fragments depicting the human predicament in a landscape shared with vanishing species.

"Wonderful poetry, haunting and evocative - a reminder to us all that wilderness in its aesthetic splendor is vanishing."
- Thomas Eisner, Schuman Professor of Chemical Ecology, Cornell University, and chairman, Endangered Species Coalition.