Elegy for a Dead Baby Bird
There are so many of you, I’m running out of flowers.
Where do you come from?—
that is to say,
who kills you? Who?
Is it your mother, in her misguided effort
to teach you how to fly?
Is it the green scum on the lake’s surface
or the foamy sweet bubble tide at its edge
that cannot have been there a hundred years ago?
Is it us?
Is it me?
The lollipop sticks, the sandwich wrappers,
the cigarettes beer cans milk jugs mason jars caution tape Christmas cards birthday cards birthday cake birthday confetti ticket stubs notebook pages coupons receipts receipts receipts CDs DVDs PVC shrapnel
all of which you must have seen,
one of which you might have swallowed—
could any of it have been mine?
Someone will see me plucking a daisy from the riverbank.
They will think
I am doing the same
as everyone else:
taking, taking,
taking till everything dies.
I wish I could agree, but
if you must die an alien death
then the least I can give you
is an alien’s funeral.
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