Tony Jennett - Anglesey Dodos

Inspired by a local news article - that hand reared pheasants were spoiling the sport? - of game-shooting



The Dodo of Mauritius so the scientists all tell us
Is extinct because the poor bird had forgotten how to fly.
But an accident of breeding and genetics that befell us
Has prevented all the pheasants here disporting in the sky.
Life-expectancy is low there,
So we don't go there!

It is certainly not genius that solved the knotty mystery.
Though, as genius goes, we're brighter than the stupid hands that
reared us
There's been a lot of carnage in our recent bloody history
But we are all descended from surviving birds who smeared us
With a fat and flightless leaning.
Get my meaning?


Hares and rabbits and, let's face it, the occasional human beater
All get shot, though sensibly, they never learned to fly,
Yet owls and swans and other birds undoubtedly much sweeter
Share perpetual immunity to blasting from the sky.
We are dumbfounded,
But stay grounded.

Let the stupid sons of Adam sort the ethos from the morals
Of destroying feathered creatures on the wing, not on the ground.
We do not wish to arbitrate upon their stupid quarrels;
Just to savour, rather mockingly, the sanctuary we've found,
So we'll proudly strut our stuff
But fly? Enough's enough!

Tony Jennett

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/anglesey-dodos/