Welcome to poetry Friday, this week hosted by Tricia, HERE. Thank you, Tricia, for hosting this last week in March. Honestly I’m glad March is nearly over. It’s not my favorite month. April is a different story, a joyful one.
This month we were given a Poetry Peeps Challenge. I found in on Tanita Davis’ blog. I thought I’d take this on at the eve of April which is National Poetry Month.
I find pantoums difficult, the repetition can feel dull, and today I must have spent six hours on two different poems which I scrapped. That is the process, however, as frustrating as it can be sometimes. I finally wrote this, my final attempt, about an animal that captures my imagination even as it’s been extinct for 300 years.
IMAGINING THE DODO AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS Only clues remain. Head and foot displayed in Oxford. What did the dodo look like? Piece of skin in Copenhagen, head and foot displayed in Oxford, upper jaw in Prague, skin in Copenhagen, bone caches in Mauritius, upper jaw in Prague, we reconstruct this flightless bird. Bone caches in Mauritius— the dodo was an island bird. We reconstruct this flightless bird that fell prey to cats and rats. The Dodo was an island bird, alone, the bird had thrived. Sailors brought the cats and rats, only clues remain. What did the dodo look like? In our past the bird remains. Janice Scully 2024
Photo by McGill Library found on Unsplash.
This flightless, island bird was no match for species of animals introduced by sailors in the 1600’s.
Have a great weekend! Thank you, Tricia, for hosting!
Glad you persevered Janice, your Dodo poem is intriguing–you add to the mystery that already exists around the bird… But again it was our human interaction that lead to their demise.
This form IS hard. You did a marvelous job with it, though. And what a cool subject!
This is lovely and I am mildly obsessed with the Dodo….
My class studied the dodo & saw its replica in one of the museums at Harvard, so your poem takes me back to that trip where it felt like it was the first time that the students understood how many living things were being lost on our earth. You’ve written a lovely poem, Janice, all truth: “In our past the bird remains.”
Janice, I love that you gave yourself freedom to play with the repeating lines. It gives the poem a story-like feel.
Thank you for this, Janice! A homage to something from the past, well done.
Oooh– I love how you used the repetition here. For me, it really underscores the harsh feel of scattering of the dodo parts.
I’ve always been fascinated with the Dodo too. I didn’t realize there were pieces of them around. I like the way your poem so directly presents that somewhat disturbing concept. The pantoum works really well for the topic. It reminds me of a puzzle, trying out the pieces in different orders. But we can’t really make the whole anymore.
Janice, nice pantoum. I’m sorry you worked so hard and scrapped two others. Did they have any hope for revival? I love the way you wrote about all the small pieces we have of the dodo, it made the repetition seem natural in those second and third stanzas. I learned a lot about the dodo from your poem too. That’s a bonus! “In our past the bird remains” is a powerful lesson we should learn, so that doesn’t keep happening.
Sorry about the earlier poems that you scrapped, but this one is proof positive that trying just one more time is a good plan!
If only we humans had paid closer attention to the tragedy of a lost species way way earlier…
Janice, I love how the parts of the dodo show up rather randomly in lines, which perfectly echoes the disjointed feeling of our knowledge of the bird. I think your other two poems were just part of the evolution of this one!