Fliss, thanks for liking my “The Pigeons.” And also for that picture of me and my dog — two ugly mutts. Actually, Wilbur is quite photogenic. (Not so sure about me.
) Thanks for mentioning the rabbit huts and the bird Olympics. That poem was inspired by me standing on a bridge above a river on a cold winter's day and watching the acrobatics of a flock of pigeons. The bridge also overlooked the central part of a small rural town where I briefly lived.
Yes, Martha was her name.
Quote:
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About September 1, 1914, the last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was roughly 29 years old, with a palsy that made her tremble. Not once in her life had she laid a fertile egg. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passenger pigeon's extinction. (Audubon, 2014)
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I’m pleased you liked “Sol Concealed,” and also thanks for thinking of me and my dog and my poem “The Stargazer’s Dog,” and for the link to “Walking the Dog.” I’m quite familiar with that Gershwin tune. It was great to hear it again, and especially to see pictures of all those composers and their pooches. I know the names and music of most of them (the humans, that is), but didn’t know what many of them look like, so that was a treat! (The video that followed that one is Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue," which I am listening to now.)
OK, here is my passenger pigeon poem.
Passenger Pigeon
(Ectopistes migratorius)
We ate beechnuts and chestnuts and acorns and seeds and ripe berries,
worms and insects—unlimited stores!—till our smart adversaries
(you people) rolled in. Every forest you felled for your lumber
impelled us to seek out new forests for berries and slumber,
to nest and to couple, lay eggs and to fledge. Without number,
we tore through the sky like a tempest. No force could encumber
that billow of birds. Women, children and geezers, on hearing
the approach of a jillion jangles, took cover. While peering
from your windows till dusk, when the last of the flight passed from sight,
you were blind to our plight: No more trees? Then we’d have to alight
on your farmlands. You started to shoot and to poison and trap us
and everything else you could think of in order to zap us.
Immune to the wolf and the weasel, the fox and the hawk,
we succumbed to your bullets as readily as the great awk.
You polished off hundreds and thousands and millions with ease!
Your bellies sang paeans when filled with such delicacies.
Murdering was, in a way, not unlike a religion.
Full of fervor, you deftly and cleverly whacked every pigeon
whizzing past, or ignited our nests. We’d be always in stock
you believed, till you noticed, alarmed, that each infinite flock
began dwindling and suddenly “infinite” turned into “nada.”
No bird-cloud now darkens your day or trills out a sonata
or cascades into canyons like meteors made of bright plumes.
Sonic booms now resound above billows of thick, silent fumes.
Best,
Martin