The fuzzy image of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker,
elusive as amnesia, rare as a new idea,
is alleged to have been captured by camera
scattering from a tree trunk in an Arkansas swamp
decades after being declared extinct
The phantom bird has again escaped detection,
free to dart in and out of hanging wonderlands
of pure chance away from malls and busy streets
If not extinct, I cheer for it to keel and hover
in perpetual innuendo and blur, never again
to be catalogued and stuffed, the last odd duck
of a species still lurking in the shade of what
remains of irony and paradox:
Like small children who migrate to dark closets
to seek the wonder and comfort of the obscure