Eulogy for an Extinct Bird

Mandibles are often so bland, it’s true

But the Great Auk, it had such mandibular grooves!

Anfractuous lines unique to each one

Etched in hooked beak like sinuous runes

The wild mystique of those mandibular grooves!

Were they for mating?

Were they for show?

Contact Newton’s Spirit and maybe he’ll know

Black slicked down white

Wing coverts so-so

So many flightless, inquisitive souls

Who’s digested remains seashore rats now peruse

Will our eyes behold no more mandibular grooves?

Death and the death of this species suffices

To prove that man’s plans and hidden god’s devices 

Can collapse the whole 

Stoic avian shoal

Men with their iron and gods with volcanoes

Can rip down bipedic birds from Hilo to Pylos

And two will be partners if it ends a third

Goddamn it’s a shame that we killed all those birds

I did nothing to stop it but I’d rather chew

Broken glass than lose all those mandibular grooves!