Wednesday 17 October 2012

Her Last Friend


Her Last Friend

The sky was brimming with rich margerine light
And the pigeon walked slowly
Nodding yes to everything in its way.
It must have landed clandestinely
Because it was almost at my feet before I saw it
(Or maybe I was too clandestine for it to notice me).
Its feathers
Were fine, dark, grey filaments of rain clouds
Its feet
Were newborn earthworms with toes, nails and scales.
It was not an unusual pigeon
But it seemed so to me.


This pigeon didn't seem to know why it was here –
The wind came and it nodded yes
The dirt rose and it nodded yes
The sun burned and
Stoically, it nodded yes.
Then it pecked at the earth
And sand sprayed like water
But the ground did not yield.
It wanted a worm or some other invertebrate
Before the rain came to drive it away
And I should say that it deserved to eat
Just for being so positive.
So it pecked again
And the sand sprayed
But the ground did not yield.
It paused (as if thinking)
Tilted its head
Then pecked again.
The sand sprayed
But the ground did not yield
So it jumped and flew away.
And so did I.