NET Surfing 2:00 A.M.

in the great invisible electronic
library of the world
the real thing is nothing
image is all

bleary with coffee
and grief for a friend
who died the day before
I find myself staring at the screen and wondering
how many pixels it takes
to make a wood duck
or an island of black frigate birds
mating in the mangroves
their globed orange throat pouches
pulsing with birdly lust

in front of me
in a space no larger than two hands spanned
I can watch flocks of pink flamingos
migrating
stick-legged, silly-beaked
bits of egg-laying confetti
left over from the big party
of creation

there's a comfort to the sight
of so many birds. Here at least,
I think,
life out-runs extinction

once in Cambridge
in the Peabody Museum
I came across the last passenger pigeon
ever sighted in America
neatly stuffed
with combed feathers and agate eyes
sitting on a fake limb in a glass case
under a card which informed me
that it had been shot
by the Harvard expedition of 1893

once I read
that Audubon himself
killed to sketch

now
in front of me
electronic snow geese
by the thousands
swirl over the marshes
of the Central Valley
now in one night
I can see
more cranes and herons
than ever fled south
before the snows of winter

I touch the screen with my fingertips
taste it with my tongue
how cold this tiny window is
that drugs me with perpetual flight
on tapes and chips and CD-ROM
the programmers have recreated paradise
and yet . . .

I pause, consider, and decide:
I strike a key
I click the mouse
I let myself forget
the crossed out phone number
the returned mail
the name he no longer answers to
the silent woods
the long darkness
the quiet
empty
sky.