Dear Dodo,
Has there ever been an uglier bird?
You, with red-tipped beak, yon gaping nostrils, most bald and all-but-plucked head.
You, misshapen as an old boot.
Can I call you my fat baby, my inelegant overgrown dove?
Has there ever been an uglier bird?
You, with red-tipped beak, yon gaping nostrils, most bald and all-but-plucked head.
You, misshapen as an old boot.
Can I call you my fat baby, my inelegant overgrown dove?
Can I call you my portly piggy pigeon?
I love your flightless girth and beady dino eyes.
I love your mud-puddle plumage.
There are many reasons I love you but most of all this: your ignominious etymology -
“Sluggard,” “Fat-arse,”
“Fool,” and “crazy.”
Can I call you, as Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck did, “loathsome bird”?
Or might I address you, in the manner of the Dutch, simply as “swollen” (as is my heart for you)?
Oh feathered lumpy lumpy!
Oh goitered low-hanging balloon!
I love your flightless girth and beady dino eyes.
I love your mud-puddle plumage.
There are many reasons I love you but most of all this: your ignominious etymology -
“Sluggard,” “Fat-arse,”
“Fool,” and “crazy.”
Can I call you, as Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck did, “loathsome bird”?
Or might I address you, in the manner of the Dutch, simply as “swollen” (as is my heart for you)?
Oh feathered lumpy lumpy!
Oh goitered low-hanging balloon!
I long to hear your call once more, low and awkward through the underbrush:
Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.
Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.
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