Whoso list to hunt it with a camera?
The Carolina parrot is extinct.
Hunted to nothing emerald.

We’ll never see its plumage, 
which lives only in the image
of psittacines caught on camera

and in Audubon prints;
but what I’d give to hear the speech of this prince
of hunted-to-nothing emerald.

Did it lure the colonists inland?
With what speech or song? Gone that song. 
A painter on the ship, not camera:

White bade his shallop men sing chanteys
in the dark, but no one emerged
from the forests of maritime emerald.

The birds must have lured them inland:
intelligent Carolina parrot.
Whoso list to hunt it with a camera,

hunted to nothing emerald?