A poem by Daniel Mark Epstein

Orioles, common as robins when I was young,
Are going the way of the passenger pigeon
Whose mile-wide flocks two counties long
(According to John James Audubon)
Wheeled and coiled like serpents in the sky,
Shutting out the light of the noon sun.
Now nobody alive has ever seen one.

No hue in nature matches the oriole’s breast,
That bright cadmium orange, except maybe
Marigolds when the sun is low. And I miss
The bird’s staccato mezzo-soprano,
His pitch, so round and rich, his syncopation.
If he has a fault, it lies in the desultory
Treatment of his theme, a predilection

For chattering preludes and fiddlery before
The main melody—a fine construction.
Half-done, he’ll take wing, leaving us to wonder
Who will sing the last notes, and when
And where, and who on earth will listen,
As if there were no end to the generations
Of passenger pigeons, orioles, songs and men.

Daniel Mark Epstein is a biographer, poet, and dramatist, born in Washington D.C. and now living in Baltimore. Acclaimed though he is in literary circles, Epstein has perhaps never had a more grateful audience than the one that gathered in grief and shock in a Baltimore bkyard two years ago to mourn the too-soon loss of a beloved cat. He read them Christopher Smart’s tribute to his cat, Jeoffrey, from his “Jubilate Agno.”
“The Vanishing Oriole” is from Epstein’s “The Glass House: New Poems,” published this year by Louisiana State University Press.