How to Find the Passenger Pigeon

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(quietly, now:)
Consider what your last gesture was, the shape and tone it took.
Maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve last spoken or locked eyes.
You must realize it’s a multi-sided relationship, touch . . .
Compose yourself (breath, intention, composition)
What do you want out of this?
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Remember that line graph regarding relationships:
A parent and their child are one line until they fray like rope
realizing their age and flaws
growing uneasy in their tangledness and regrets.
Some beings only intersect at one or two intervals:
A barely conceivable constellation found only on lonely nights
before ricocheting off into their separate worlds.
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Once the most abundant bird in North America,
The Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius
French “passager” meaning “passing by”,
was hunted to extinction in brutal fashion, and for sport.
The last living bird in captivity, Martha,
died on September 1, 1915. In the Cincinnati Zoo.
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The cryptozoo is a current of hopeful aspirations
of re-wilding, of rewinding, of finding glimmers.
(a group of robed nobodies meets at the intersection of long abandoned amusement parks, the miracles of the bog, the nowhere of ancient forums in 90s font and garish tone, and the dusty archives of oral tales delivered on wry wrinkled lips)
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In these circles, and in secret pockets of sky, she is called a living fossil
She only seems to haunt disparate blogs.
The stuff which floats up from institutions are all tainted,
just captive images and nothing of the living sort.
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Round out the hope with skepticism: She’s likely all gone. All done.
If I saw one I think I would keep it to myself, the site and sighting.
To report is to make her visible, endangered.
There’s a divinity in this carefulness.
The quietness of bird searching.
The queer wandering of a desire line, carved through the deep unseen and unheard.
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See each and every pigeon and dove shape (little dollops, rounded darlings) with precision
(See also: ledges, wires, rooftops, bus stops for starters)
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I want to call out to her; I don’t belong to these people. I’m not part of their ploy.
I only inherited this. And not her soft body.
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Wonder how much of your desire to rekindle your unexplainable love (disappearance)
is due to some nostalgia over who you both used to be, what you meant to each other
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Ask their friends how you’re doing
like carrion sorting the scraps long after she’s gone.
(have you any deer trail I could follow through the thickets?
Any pattern of time or distance I can adapt to find you?)
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^{Images include artwork, screengrabs, and photos collected by the author}