Poem: ‘Unison Call’

Science in meter and verse

By Elizabeth Kuelbs edited by Dava Sobel & Clara Moskowitz

Illustration of multiple cranes flying — Masha Foya

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After Gee Whiz, the first whooping crane hatched at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wis., and the work of crane recovery

So, extirpation:
Wings, glint-white, black-tipped, seven feet wide, river
over glyptodonts and plow horses, marshes and farms,
guns and snowy plumed hats, until power lines
zap elegant necks and we count whoopers
on fingers and toes.

So, we make a little wetland space, in Texas.

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So, one bird-loving guy says:
If we stick with it, they’re gonna come through.

A second says:
If it flies, it dies.

So, life.
A zoo-born bird craves
a human mate. Seven years
the first guy dances with her before she lays
a wrinkled buff egg. Around its rare yolk, cells
swell and begin to squirm in the candling machine’s glow.

So, Gee Whiz.
His weird shell dries, requires precise ice water to plump
his tiny sack. He pulses, peeps, hatches hungry. Too
small, he drinks from a tube. Too caged, he pecks
the heck out of chow and the strange cranes who
fill his bowl. When raccoons kill his mama,
he lives. When the second guy shoots
whoopers in Texas, his genes
live.

When you see your love—
both of you stretch your throats skyward,
bugle your primordial calls
to your kind, rising
nest by incubator, marsh by heart,
ultralight by fledging cinnamon chick.

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