Ivory-billed woodpecker lives.
—headline, Arkansas Times, 28 April 2005

Oddly-fingered, they probe doorslips,
wrap around backbones. Their voices
cluster in the spare change on the table,
mutate like jazz. The ghosts of women
who once loved the man you love
approve of history. Memory is the wishbone
they pull until it splinters, theirs the winning end.
The names of women attach to flowers,
rose and daisy and laurel. Their time
petals. After the stray pet drags injustice
in from the alley, we wear it well. Its jewel
hangs on our ears, its cameo at our throats.
Only then do the ghosts of women laugh.
They know the throb of injustice, have worn it
too. Their dresses float as they gain a spectred
weight. Of course we are deceived
in wishing them gone. Their wings span
tupelos like the legendary bird, the one
called Lord God, its existence a rumor
of books. The ghosts of women rise
like Lord God from the swamp, white bill
made visible by the fact of our eyes.