The Lord God Bird
Finis Origine Pendet
Louisiana, 1944
They say my father is dead —
Generations of men before me lie limp in the swamp-grass.
Not ten of them were good enough to stay.
Men came with rifles and chewing tobacco;
Old, half-taken by gout;
Young, whooping to their comrades
After a day of bang! Shooting
Fast, dark bullets that threw our mothers limp on the ground
Into their grimy hands:
“I bagged a good one, show Liza back home.”
More came, too —
In wagons, in trucks that spewed greasy smoke
Into our eyes.
They heard our calls,
The song for danger:
“Goddamn, those birds are loud.”
Trees swung to the forest floor.
Mammoth machines ran through the empty earth they left —
Back then we didn’t know their names.
More steam, more smoke;
They used our wood to lay the tracks.
We starved like my grandfather,
Who chipped through his kidnapper’s
Table — This time, we had no choice.
We did slowly in those days.
(Interlude: I once heard,
When I was young,
When there were more of us,
That the murderer women wore our feathers
On their hats.)
One day I’ll find another
Like me —
A woman with a black crest,
Elegant, long wings that swoop patterns in the sky.
We’ll build our nest in a tree corpse —
Solid, supple wood.
I’ll clasp her beak, hold her closes
On rainy evenings.
One day they’ll all come to see us.
We’ll soar from sun-soaked trees
In Louisiana heat,
Unfurl our painted wings
And cry into the blue morning,
We’re here! We’re here! We’re here!
And they’ll shout again, as they always did, “Lord God! What a bird!”
I want to hear the triumphant trumpet
Of a golden beak I
Want to feel the embrace
Of war-hardened hands
Under a baldcypress I
Want to know that when we are gone
They will remember us.
Maeve Kennedy ’24 was named a Lamont Younger Poet in 2021. The Lamont Younger Poets Prize is bestowed annually on select preps and lowers who show exceptional promise as well as achievement in the early years of developing their craft. The poem was originally published in the Winter 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.