Last passenger
+ -Last passenger
- - - -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
a 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.
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
a 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.