August 2: Mourning Dove, Keith Taylor, "The Last Resort"

This morning, as I was typing this post, a mourning dove landed on the railing of my balcony.  I watched it strut back and forth, raise its tail, shit on the iron ledge.  Then it turned, looked at me a few moments, and flew off.


And I was the intruder in that little scene.  That dove was doing what mourning doves have been doing for centuries.  I, with my laptop computer and bottled water, am a tiny blip on the epochal map.  A melting glacier.  A Carolina parakeet.  Great auk.  Passenger pigeon.

Saint Marty is on the road to extinction, like every other living thing.

The Last Roost

by:  Keith Taylor

There's a record written years later:
up in Emmett County, after months
of slaughter--50,000 a day
sent to Chicago--the passenger
pigeons rose in their last flock, circled
over Lake Michigan, terrified
of land, and finally exhausted
rested, relieved perhaps, in water.