The Last Wild Passenger Pigeon Makes Her Concession Speech, and: After the Blight

Abstract

The Last Wild Passenger Pigeon Makes Her Concession Speech, and: After the Blight Kathleen Brewin Lewis (bio) THE LAST WILD PASSENGER PIGEON MAKES HER CONCESSION SPEECH My mother called me Piqua, as she bentover our warm whorl with bits of worm. A word she taught me: flock.How I dreamt of them, a feathered risingabove the trees, cries of coo-roo coo-roo.Safety in numbers, winged joy! They hunted us, devoured us.One day we were gone. I combedthe woods for markings like mine:blue-gray head, rosy breast, graceful neck.I called into the deep hush. I have lost the race. [End Page 20] AFTER THE BLIGHT after Anya Silver The poem was the wood and the way out of the wood.The poet wound her way through a forest,up to the porch of an old cabin, its floor plankedwith chestnut cut and planed before the blight,back when the trees cast shady alcoves,sheltered songbirds. (Remember the smellof roasting chestnuts?) She napped on the porch,on the smooth planks, rose to gather fresh words,plucked them from the limbs of the ghost trees,lined up the words, sent the poem downstream,out of the wood and into the field,which was full of light. [End Page 21] Kathleen Brewin Lewis Kathleen Brewin Lewis is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Fluent in Rivers and July's Thick Kingdom. Her writing has also been published in Southern Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, Cider Press Review, and Still: The Journal. Copyright © 2019 Berea College