Dodo

[writemeout.livejournal.com]

Henry Carlile, "Dodo"

Years they mistook me for you,
chanting your name in the streets,
pointing grubby fingers.
Today in the natural history museum
I saw why.
Dodo, you look the way I feel,
with your sad absentminded eyes
and your beak like a stone-age axe.
Even your feathers
dingy and fuzzy.
What woman would want them for a hat?

With a name like Didus ineptus
where could you go,
wings too small to fly with
and feet so large and slow?
You were not very palatable.
Men slaughtered you for sport.
Hogs ate the one egg you laid each year.
Sometimes I think I know how it feels
to be scattered over the world,
a foot in the British Museum,
a head in Copenhagen,
to be a lesson after the fact,
an entity in name only,
and that taken in vain.

Comments

[ktin520.livejournal.com]

I really like this one. I have to make a note to read more from the author.

[nghtwishpoetess.livejournal.com]

Ah yes...I remember when you shared this poem with me. I really like it.