Dodo

Earthbound islander who lost

your eggs and innocence to feed

the coloniser's pig and dog, how

could you be, the child asked,

staring through the glass, then

be no more? Once I wondered

but now I know: where you went

we will follow, beyond the focus

of our fudging delegates who

swoop in, oiled and gleaming

on metal wings to conference,

vex and snort, banquet and bargain

in cliques of gorge and denial.

Dodo: our mythic literal, history's catch,

the test we’ve failed and failed again,

feathered measure of extinction,

you’re dessicating still, caged, like us

in your very endness, harbinger of

all this future's ravaging immensities.

Jacqueline Saphra