Self Portrait Featuring Migratory Bird Treaty Act
after Hannah Gamble
I wanted to be like the songbird, singing
and light. Bones full of air. And despite
my smallness to travel great distances
over mountains and across large tracts
of urbanized land without respite.
I wanted migration. To persevere
through instinct the first time and after
through memory, my unique know-how
and gumption. And I wanted to be beautiful
while doing it, a perfectly embodied metaphor
for delicacy and grace. I wanted it
to be made federally illegal to harm me,
to feel that special, protected.
But the migratory songbird
doesn’t really feel legal protection –
it’s mostly symbolic – what they feel
most helped by are bird-feeders,
probably, and empty fields
where we could have built, but didn’t.
| Rebecca Bornstein |
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