Present Things*
from Scissor, Paper, Woman
There is the corpse of something
like an effigy of her
stuffed with wood-fibre
propped by rods standing
on perpetual exhibit at the Nature Museum
And as though some loss might be prevented
the bird has been mounted
wired to alarms in a theft-proof glass cabinet
Passenger Pigeon
A passenger for once that pigeon
dazed and weak from shifting winds
folded her wings and hid
in the steam-warmed chink of a black locomotive
The engine stamped '1914' **
was the one that carved woodlands
the one that sliced prairies and ran
roping mountains and ribboning canyons with iron
The one that shrieked punctual warning
down all the sundrunk summer days
and howled baleful threats
through dark and long and lonely winter nights
The one that went leaving the immigrant
all his worldly goods cast
around him in satchels
on remote station platforms
the one that trailed echoes in empty valleys
and a signature of smoke...
The one that would skirt
the salt-sprayed coast at last
and turn and begin
unravelling the country again
It carried her into the country
we're headed for
the future
now
we know she flew before us
That hot-blood bird lived by fast desire
for seeds for berries
then fuelled on them ravaged
crop-fields and orchards
Consuming all fruiting earth she raced
in hungry migratory twisters
nevermind winters summer droughts bad harvests
Heedless she was
madness feathered
an impetuous blitz of appetite
farmers hated her species near numerous
as all other birds combined
And so in a rage
for sport or feathers
for the taste of her meat
the world took aim
and shot
Sleek-necked and amber-eyed
with a russet breast and mottled mantle
in fragile abundance
she flourished once
on earth with us
But only lately have we come to mourn
the savage passage
of that common dove
whose glory was
the love of present things
* Based on a reading of "On a Monument to the Pigeon", a passionate elegiac essay on the Passenger Pigeon, by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949.
** Presumed year of extinction of Ectopistes migratorium -- the Passenger Pigeon.
|
