Seriema
Dad let us pick the Seriema out ourselves,
legs like cotton-stalks, and eyes like coal;
our living-fossil bird. He looked most
ancient when he called out, head so far
back as to touch his neck, when strangers came.
We put him in among the newborn chicks
who shyed from their prehistoric babysitter.
We fashioned him a toilet-paper crown.
It slipped and hung around his neck
damp and stuck with yellow paint and tape.
‘King of the Chickens,’ we called him.
Sasha de Buyl-Pisco
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