Keith Taylor
The Last Roost
There’s a record written years later:
up in Emmett County, after months
of slaughter—50,000 a day
sent to Chicago—the passenger
pigeons rose in their last flock, circled
over Lake Michigan, terrified
of land, and finally exhausted
rested, relieved perhaps, in water.
Running Down From the Hills
I limped too close to night and too far
into that dry south CA valley
and came out on a high sweaty trail
I didn’t know. It took forever
on bad knees. Fog was blowing in cold
and I was hobbling down too slowly
when a mountain lion screamed somewhere
below me. I moved more quickly then.