Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Tea colored Atchafalaya,

Who has taken her color from the basin

Of cypress-tupelo swamps, bottomland hardwood forests,

Freshwater marshes, saltwater marshes;

Egret wings white over you;

Bullfrog nights; deer hove days;

Merciless sun broil and burn;

I hear the echo of an ivory-billed woodpecker

At the altar of wildness; an ivory bill chiseling grubs.

See a flash of red—extinction.

When a species dies in this world part of us all die.

There is no second coming.

Can the red tuff upon a woodpeckers head be a crown of thorns?

Can the hammering of an ivory bill be a gavel?

Thursday, April 28, 2005 Posted: 9:54 AM EDT (1354 GMT)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, has been rediscovered in a remote part of Arkansas some 60 years after the last confirmed U.S. sighting, bird experts said Thursday.

www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/28/woodpecker.found.reut/index.html