the fossil record

<<5>>

Extinction's Cousin

I came back for scraps—
      what else could I carry in my dislocated jaw?

With my tough, oily flesh,
      what chance would I have of finding relatives?

I came for a theory.

     String theory, combustion theory.
            A shred of evidence:

"So, in an unsettling Damien Hirst-like tableau, the bird was beak to beak with its own face…" (Ian Parker, The New Yorker, January 22nd 2007)

I knew allusions would be required.

            Illegible notes,
                        the certain rustling of papers
                              unearthed as the dead make peace with the living,

that I must wait a considerable length of time,

as after a bereavement.

It has been that long.

Here I stand before you wearing just plain skin.

What name will you give me,

the one without fur, scales, or feather?

                  What will you say to a second extinction?

I came to the island of trash, Mauritius, near Madagascar, where there are certain butterflies and jewels left among corrugated roofs and contraptions to siphon rainwater into buckets that reek with odorous sulphurs.

I was looking for a fluke.

         Perhaps the Dodo bird.

Give me something endemic to the landscape—

                  no palms, no sugarcane.

Allow me a shell, a bit of coral with some color left in it,           mauves that exist only in the imagination.

Can we name those we never knew?

Of the fragmentary Oxford Dodo, shopworn
and foul-smelling,

                        only articles from Nature
and DNA survive.

Let’s sift through the passenger pigeon's leavings,
            its calling cards and mother-of-pearl wings.

Are these our relatives?

            What do they say
                        when they gather together
                                    for feasting?

When breaking the crust of rock to aid the search
                                                             of a revered specialist, a man

                                                who has traveled beyond tourism
                                                            and hard candy
to satisfy his eccentric needs.


How will we deal with fossilized pollen?

How excavate shit, mine mud, dig out

glacial till to find a bone.

I came back for this—
"a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turky cock. (ibid.)"

I came to the circus to see
one Dodo who had survived its water passage to

the British Isles.

The absurdly large bill frightened me into silence.

Judith Skillman