an Egg a Day Two

Ova Aves, Thick-Billed Murre, 2001, colour print, 24 x 20 in

A ghost is clasped within your inked cameo, the blue funk

of extinction, ancestral memory of all those who came ashore,

scurvy navvy and curator alike, club in hand,

to batter the Great Auk into oblivion.

Tuxedoed and noble, you preside at the continent’s edge,

rejoicing at every empty wave.

The Atlantic roils below, while your egg, clever dervish,

twirls on its precarious ledge – without a great fall.

You gargle and mumble your complaint;

your guttural chorus erects a sentinel of sound,

to remind us of the cost of silence.

Photograph by Thaddeus Holownia. Poem by Harry Thurston. 

From the catalogue Ova Aves published by Anchorage Press, 2011.