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+---
+title: Last passenger
+genre: verse
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    css: autocento
+...
+
+Memory works strangely, spooling its thread \
+over the nails of events barely related, \
+creating finally some picture, if we’re \
+lucky, of a life---but more likely, it knots \
+itself, catches on a nail or in our throats \
+that gasp, as it binds our necks, for air.
+
+An example: today marks one hundred years \
+since your namesake, the last living passenger \
+pigeon, died in Cincinnati.  It also marks \
+one year since we last spoke.  Although around \
+the world, zoos mourn her loss, I'm done \
+with you.  I mourn no more your voice, the first \
+sound I heard outside my body that reached \
+into my throat and set me ringing.  But that string---
+
+memory that feels sometimes more like a tide \
+has yoked together, bound your voice to that bird, \
+the frozen, stuffed, forgotten pigeon---my heart \
+is too easy, but it must do---to blink, to flex \
+its unused toes, slowly thaw to the wetness \
+of beating wings, fly to me again, and alight, \
+singing full-throated, on my broken shoulder.