It takes hundreds of
millions of years to find her
but the dark ones
discover their Eve in the fossilized
shallows of a
lagoon. They call her Rosetta Stone, Mother
Bird, trace their
talons through the delicate impression
of feathers in the
limestone, her fine-grained imprint
of bone. Witness her
forearms, her fingers, her gentle
curving claws, come
as close to a caress as a lover.
She is excavated,
brushed clean with warm black
feathers, chipped
out bill by bill bit by bit until
her form is fresh,
withdrawn from the earth, untombed,
flown to the free
birds of the world. It is decided
that she belongs to
all. The work begins,
dividing her bones,
the hollow stamps of her plumes
pecked into relics,
sold for seeds to the cardinals
who tuck them away
in reliquaries, avail them
as blessings on the
laybirds.
In time the relics
fade, the bones decay. All
that is left of the
avian eve is her memory, her myth.
An ancient soul that
once had a tail, shed to touch
the night sky,
spread her wings so deep into the night
that the inky ether
wrapped her in its sheen,
set her glory in the
morning, rival to the sun,
calls her
clandestine, carbon, kohl, lastly crow, after lover.
Khara House, Pennsylvania, USA
