Ivory-billed Woodpeckers

I wrote this poem for my friend and all of those people looking for "the bird."


The Bird

There have been reports of the thought
to have been extinct ivory-billed woodpecker
in a panhandle swamp. I have
submitted these reports. I have seen the end
reimagined without despair,
somehow, wheeling over me, slow
as the sun. The particulars
are for another place, one where much
is lost in footnotes and cavity calculations
and some may see something
besides the bird if that is how it comes out,
how the words sound to all these people
who remember the way things should be.
But there is a catastrophic name given
to them and their henchman, their skidders
and hard hats, and the way they step on light,
believing it can be crushed, bent
and yes I will speak, I will admit
to the curvature of time, I will admit
to the misfire of neurons, the wish fulfillment
of every nascent morning, but I will not say
the world cannot be refound,
that this bird cannot awaken
from a dark sleep, that we are not capable
of becoming our better selves.