I'd lift my forehead from the book and see <br />a flock consisting of a billion birds, <br />like a river in the heavens, three <br />miles wide, and forty miles in length. My words <br />never pierced the shadow they cast down. <br />Born more than eighty years too late, I could <br />not warn them of the threat of each new town, <br />of hunters waiting in the underwood. <br />For hours they were sovereigns to my eyes, <br />passing over Mercer County. The sun <br />gilded their feathers in the bloody twilight, <br />and when they vanished over the horizon <br />towards Ohio, Michigan, and the night, <br />what I heard were not coos, only cries.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/passenger-pigeons/
