Re: Ivory-billed Woodpeckers

[Glenda Cotter <gcotter at upress dot utah dot edu>]

While we're all pledging not to rush off to Arkansas to look for this 
lifer, perhaps we should also pledge to write a check to The Nature 
Conservancy and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology?

I don't usually (well, never before) share this sort of thing, but the 
morning's euphoria seems to have overwhelmed my typically calm 
good sense. After years of reading your posts, even those of you 
whom I've never met seem like friends. Surely today's 
announcement is something to celebrate among the friends of our 
birding community? What follows is my attempt--a little deliriously--
to do so. :)

Cheers,
Glenda Cotter

April 28, 2005
On Hearing the News That
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers Have Been Found

Do you suppose that this is how they felt, the
friends of Lazarus, when he was seen to walk again?
Seen to blink and pause and breathe
among the living things of the world?
his friends seeking one another 
not to console, as they?d done so often,
but in a moment of immense happiness
and disbelief, stirred by euphoria
at news so good that almost
it defied all comprehension.
So much has been given to grief and loss,
thoughts have so long been troubled 
by the struggle to save a memory or a fragment,
then let hope sing
at this chance
for resurrection.

A grand bird given back
after sixty years of absence
by some unnameable grace:
What?s black and white and red all over,
and ivory-billed and so long gone?
Something that is both blessing and confirmation
at a moment when the tide had nearly
turned to despair, for all that has been lost
and all that is going to be lost and for
everything in this miraculous world
that will never come again under this
sea of cloud and sky and sun.
And yet they have been found.
Believe the words in this one instance,
for a single immaculate moment,
and believe again in possibility:
some of the missing do return
and we are given up to our rejoicing.

--Glenda Cotter, copyright 2005
  May not be reproduced without permission


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