# dead letters from dinosaur days > Published on Jul 11, 2025 # pigeon ## dead birds all over the place at capaha park > every thought [embodied by words](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10150527-thoughts-die-the-moment-they-are-embodied-by-words) > every dream that was trying to tell you something > every thing you knew but avoided > every hit of what kept you dependent > every moment you tried to keep forever My brother and I saw them all, one commonplace afternoon, literally littering the grounds of Capaha Park in Cape Girardeau, MO. They were everywhere. All down the hill from the vast old concrete pool. In the shade of the massive oaks around the goose pond. Dead eyes staring at the vacant swingset, motionless as the decommissioned [tank locomotive](https://www.capecentralhigh.com/cape-photos/parks/hooligans-deface-train/) we used to climb around on. Empty of life as the ball field between games, when we used to crawl in under the fence to play on the bleachers and hide out in the dugouts. Dead letters from dinosaur days. Piteous punctuation. Memento mori. > every promise to yourself > every friend left behind > every wasted word > every unsaid thought > every thing you bought We walked on, the day feeling increasingly ominous and close. There’s another one. Another one, there. Another, and another. Dozens of them. They were all or almost all, as I recall, the same species. Some kind of blackbird? Not big like a crow nor small like a finch. Not colorful like robins or cardinals. Just birds — off-axis, their streamlined bodies out of the stream, scattered forgotten duckpins, the physicality of uselessness. Beauty with its mouth open, mocking itself. Maybe they were mockingbirds. > every song caught in your throat > every evening’s detritus of memory > every flight of fancy grounded > every morning lost to mourning > every heartbeat falling from the sky What killed the birds? Some quirk of place and timing, some airborne noxious event of the mid-1980s, some accident of engineering, a virus, a bug in the simulation? We proposed various theories, but ultimately had to settle for having no answers. Where did we walk after that? Perhaps past the boat house (not a boathouse, but a gloriously ostentatious [house that looked like a boat](https://www.capecentralhigh.com/cape-photos/the-boat-house/)); past the rose garden; up the hill to Academic Hall, maybe into the University Center, there to loiter and perchance avail ourselves of the time machine (which is another pigeon for another *time*). Oh shit — I hope we didn’t do something obliviously stupid, like going back in time and plucking one flower or swatting one mosquito, and *that’s* what caused those birds to suddenly not be able to exist back in our timeline! I mean ... seems pretty unlikely but ... you never know. Kids playing in elevators, kids dilly-dallying with the fabric of spacetime, just because they can ... you never know ...