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From the Ben Lilly Lookout

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Trogon or turkey? The deep call rises
from the forest below
to the lookout rocks, where a metal plaque
pays tribute to Ben Lilly
who killed the last wild grizzly in the Gila Wilderness
and too many lions
for counting. If a trogon, then surely
the first here on record. The ones he didn’t shoot
he killed with a knife whose blade
was a vicious curve. In Lilly’s day
God called upon his kind to cull
the numbers, and he worked as well
for government as for a man
with time and money to spend on tracking down
a bear whose size
set him up for sport. Listening carefully
the call comes two notes at a time, suggesting
trogon. But here? Ben Lilly slept
in tree boughs, ate cougar meat, earned
seventy-five dollars a month
to hunt and trap in Arizona, and brought
extinction close enough to touch.
A turkey is no surprise, even though
the rarity would make a better story: a bird
worth waiting hours for,
just to see the flash
of red and know it lives
against whatever odds the age
has set against it.