Talking to the Dodo

I do know that you died, you and

all of your kind, a long time ago.

But I want to have this conversation

and the living don’t have the patience.

You know what it’s like to fall

into a lake of tears, to think you will

never reach dry land again, never

unruffle your bedraggled feathers.

My whole life has become a caucus race,

with no beginning and no end,

no rules, and no winners, only losers.

What I want to ask you, Dodo, is why

did you simply drop out of the story?

I’m afraid the same fate awaits me.

Granted you made a bit of a mark,

but it’s crumbling now, dust in the wind,

with all the other forgotten creatures

who didn’t give a thought to legacies

or heritage, or what people thought of them.

Who remembers your beautiful plumage now?

All we know is your extinction.

After all, you couldn’t even fly!

I’m not a flyer myself, the more I try

to take off into the blue empyrean,

the more I am grounded on this sad earth,

my colours fading, my voice moving

further off into the mute distance.

What undoes me is that when I am gone

no-one will rail against the unfairness

of it all, no-one will complain.

No-one will write me into a story,

even if only to drop me out of it again.

I won’t even be a wail on the wind.