For the Last Carolina Parakeet
Previously Published in Number One, Gallatin, Tennessee
I imagine the loneliness of your aviary
there at the Cincinnati Zoo where your
predecessor, the last Passenger Pigeon
flew off to oblivion just a few years earlier.
One voice is not a choir.
You were part of a social species,
descending by the thousands,
on fields to consume cockleburs,
or orchards for luscious fruits.
One voice is not a choir.
Some labelled you a pest
and pursued with shotguns.
Audubon noticed your species
in decline even in his bygone days.
One voice is not a choir.
No welcoming song of your fellows
greeted your waning days. Does your
skin adorn a museum, just as your
ancestors’ feathers adorned lady’s hats?
On voice is not a choir.
It saddens me to think my adopted home
of Tennessee once knew the calls and colors
of a native parrot. One scientist titled
an article about your kin, “Forever Gone.”
No voices remain in the choir.
An image of the Carolina Parakeet, once Native to Tennessee and the Carolinas, appears here. Painting by John James Audubon. https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/carolina-parrot
Previously Published in Number One, Gallatin, Tennessee
I imagine the loneliness of your aviary
there at the Cincinnati Zoo where your
predecessor, the last Passenger Pigeon
flew off to oblivion just a few years earlier.
One voice is not a choir.
You were part of a social species,
descending by the thousands,
on fields to consume cockleburs,
or orchards for luscious fruits.
One voice is not a choir.
Some labelled you a pest
and pursued with shotguns.
Audubon noticed your species
in decline even in his bygone days.
One voice is not a choir.
No welcoming song of your fellows
greeted your waning days. Does your
skin adorn a museum, just as your
ancestors’ feathers adorned lady’s hats?
On voice is not a choir.
It saddens me to think my adopted home
of Tennessee once knew the calls and colors
of a native parrot. One scientist titled
an article about your kin, “Forever Gone.”
No voices remain in the choir.
An image of the Carolina Parakeet, once Native to Tennessee and the Carolinas, appears here. Painting by John James Audubon. https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/carolina-parrot
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