---
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.