The Lending Library of Dead Birds

by Sandra L. Chaff

The last museum specimens of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers with reliable collection data were a male and female pair taken during the 1920s in Osceola County, Florida. Museums, such as the Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh, house collections of extinct-bird specimens that may be taken out on loan.

Start with the long white beak of a borrowed bird 

              forever gaping     

startled outburst of final breath     

before eye     reflecting bark    

                                 its squirm of beetle larvae 

glazes over     dulls dries

Contemplate this     

moment of endmost breath     out-haled in 

Osceola County eight decades gone    

when green defuses into black     when all is stillness 

and history before we even know it

Locate in this specimen     desire  

an airy bubble caught in a whorl of

brain lobe 

      now soaked gray in formaldehyde

stored in a drawer     in a city of steel

Sandra Chaff is an archivist and attorney who lives in Philadelphia. Her poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Six, and the 2017 Moonstone Featured Poets Anthology, among other publications. She is a founding member of the long-running poetry collective 34th Street Poets, who have performed their poetry in and around Philadelphia, including as part of the annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival.