(25)

Pigeon

When he walks in the early morning, there’s no telling
what he’ll find.
Often he finds nothing which is alright, too,
for nothing binds us to ourselves like the lack
of something new.
Sometimes he’ll spot a coin or two on the road,
a penny or a dime, once even a silver quarter,
pleased to think his solitary time, after all,
had a fiscal value or worth of some kind,
no matter how small.

This morning’s discovery took him another direction,
if the truth be known, toward recollection, for there,
in the middle of the street was, for him at least,
an uncommon sight,
a dead pigeon, a common rock dove,
not run over by a car’s wheel, it seems, but killed
somehow while in flight,
its one wing, bloodied at the joint,
twisted upwards as if to catch the morning breeze,
the other weighed down by its’ delicate, artful body,
still whole as if it might once more coo and trill,
ringed in maroon and grey, with a light green sheen
on the neck feathers below the bill.

He carefully picked up the bird, so fragile and light,
and carried it from the road, down a grassy slope,
placing it gently at the foot of a telephone pole which
seemed appropriate, just right,
when you think of the part pigeons played,
their role, crossing enemy lines in the Great War,
flying through gun fire and cannon fire
with urgent messages to deliver once more.

 

< Previous Poem	Next Poem >