Audubon Arrives at the End of Discoveries:
The Common or Artic Puffin
Thomas Joswick
Winner - 2005 Editors’ Prize in Poetry

They nest like rabbits in the light soil
of Perroket Island. Their burrows perforate
the ground, causing me to stumble as I advance.

All about me, the nestlings emerge,
like bright mushrooms, then retreat below.
When burrows give way beneath my step,

the young are trapped in the loose earth,
or trampled outright. Their voices rise
in muffled grunts. The stench is disagreeable.

Adults speed overhead like arrows,
with slender fish of silvery hues
trailing backward from their painted bills.

Our boat is filled with ones we’ve killed,
to be spiced and packed in brine and shipped
to England. Here, none but the poor

will eat its flesh, or its eggs, which,
when boiled, turn livid blue.
I collect as many eggs as I can find,

and gather several young for study.
That night, they dash about incessantly,
and I lie awake, listening to their footfalls.

Audubon Suffers the Intimacies of Art:
The Iceland or Jer Falcon
Thomas Joswick

My son carefully closed their eyes,
and wrapped them in a sturdy cloth,
that he might carry the pair
without damage the seven miles
to where I lay ill
off Labrador’s coast.

Reader, do not suppose that I delayed
to hold so scarce a species.
I pushed back the pale blue
lids to observe their dark grey
eyes — still bright,
as if alert even in death.

I distended their clenched talons,
I stretched out their powerful wings,
I opened their bills to view
their red mouths, I ran
my small finger along
the ridges on their tongues.

I took their portraits, simply posed,
laboring with sore hands
and a painful head the whole
of the night. I finished at sunrise,
when a cold rain began,
and water smeared my colours.

My son carefully preserved their skins,
having studied with me first
their singular forms — their tough
bluish flesh, their large hearts,
their uncommonly thin stomachs,
their deep-set, unblemished eyes.

Audubon Anticipates Dawn and Blood:
The Pinnated Grouse
Thomas Joswick

Beneath tufts of lanceolate feathers,
one to each side of the neck,
depend orange, globular bladders,
soft receptacles for air,
the Grouse’s instruments
for “booming.”

The male inflates the pendant pouches
to the size of oranges, then opens his bill,
and rolls the air out, as it were,
in sounds from loud to low,
like the muffled tones
of a drum.

Before sunrise, from scratching-grounds,
where males assemble to strut and boom,
you may hear their rumbled notes,
followed, at times, by rapid
and petulant cackling,
like laughter.