The Elephant Bird

You were said to be
the biggest bird
we’d ever known.

Bones, feathers,
archaeology,
myths in one--

smiling death in Madagascar.

You could feed many
for months.

O
your size*,
o
your grotesque size
really gets me,
it bewilders me, I am on my knees here:

that’s the honor you still have
you stuffed museum doll.

One of your eggs
is big
as a wall
mirror, and I look in her,
and I see the elephant
head nodding forth like a Christ.

Angel of growth. You caw
or roar
with cancer
in that category, roar

at the gun-
shots of my ancestry.




*10 ft. tall, 1,100 lbs.