Leo Yankevich

Passenger Pigeons

I'd lift my forehead from the book and see
a flock consisting of a billion birds,
like a river in the heavens, three
miles wide, and forty miles in length. My words
never pierced the shadow they cast down.
Born more than eighty years too late, I could
not warn them of the threat of each new town,
of hunters waiting in the underwood.
For hours they were sovereigns to my eyes,
passing over Mercer County . The sun
gilded their feathers in the bloody twilight,
and when they vanished over the horizon
towards Ohio, Michigan , and the night,
what I heard were not coos, only cries.