DODO

Each twig a field of oxygen

Each pebble a frog’s hike

- Cozi

Instructed to draw a bird, any bird,

On a large sheet of cream-colored paper,

And out the windows, right when I needed them,

No birds to copy in their flight.

Out of the crayons came a wavering outline, colored in:

A short, portly gentleman

Led by a great yellow beak,

And empty circles for eyes, no wings, no feet,

And to take advantage of my ignorance

In large letters I printed DODO.

Extinct bird:

What might have been before it wasn’t anymore.

Over my shoulder this condensed block

Of an elderly presence loomed.

Miss Brown. In our grammar schools back then,

No teacher could be a Mrs.,

Lest pregnancy, with its yeasty mountain-moving,

Perturb our tiny brains.

Some teachers had brains

That could be measured in milligrams, like the dodo’s,

In inverse proportion to their spinsterly meanness

And it’s a good thing most are extinct by now,

Having borne no offspring into our little world.

DODO . Miss Brown took offense,

Wrote a note, folded it, sent me down

The ghost-inhabited hallway to the principal. In the hallway air,

The distinct but merging essences

Of generations of chalk dust and spattered urine,

Spirits of ancient white bread and bologna sandwiches.

This the same hallway my father trod. There he was

With his thoughts, what he knew and what he didn’t yet know

Clicking into their proper places,

So I wonder if they beat the imagination out of him

And that’s why there are so many salesmen in my family.

The cramped, scarred desks, children sounding out

The words in staggered unison,

The dull, planned minutes of Seth Thomas clocks,

And between each click

Eternity showed its face –

Sometimes it yawned, sometimes it grinned –

And me striding

Past classroom after classroom, angry, ashamed, prideful,

Carrying the injustice on my shoulders, on my big way

To the principal’s big office.

The ruler slapped

The back of my hand, once, twice.

Up went her hand for the third.

I took off, and instead of choosing home

I chose a hike to my Saturday place,

Down the hill through the woods

Into the doorless world of trees.

No Miss Brown to castigate me, no dodos to instruct me

In the ancient ways of impulse,

But plenty of birds and much bird song.

Between each rallying signaling of my presence,

I filled in – twitters and trills and tweets –

Until I was a bird among the birds.

Oh, I could fly

But had drawn no wings

So had no need to fly.