Every day she rowed slowly through the swamp
in search of the Lord God Bird.
One of many scientists, she hoped
to prove it had not gone extinct.
Her camera ready, she steered randomly,
taking a different route each time
through the waterlogged snags
and the living trees that fed the beetles
whose larvae fed the bird. The day he flew over
backlit by the sun, she was too stunned
to do anything but stare at the large cross
his body made vanishing into the woods,
his crest like the tip of an arrow
dipped in blood.
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