Audubon at Oakley Plantation
I need them true to life
and so I shoot them,
as many as fill the field at dawn,
and then fix wires
to prop them as if feeding their young
or bending to the river.
Why make a little book
when they exist life-sized,
can be etched to stand high as my hip?
Often have I wished
I had eight pairs of hands to hold them,
and another body for the gun.
Copyright Credit: Rachel Richardson, “Audubon at Oakley Plantation” from Copperhead. Copyright © 2011 by Rachel Richardson. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Source: Copperhead (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011)