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Pigeons can't fly.
Not really.
They sit on their ledges
nodding buoyant heads
like rear window hula dancers

While their coils run down,
the coils that sproing them
from their perches
like those silly suction spring toys.

 

 

 

 

They're sproinged
into the uncertainty of open air,
pretending purpose
with their useless wind wings,

 

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Continuing outward until
they reach the end
of the invisible elastic
that binds them to the ledge,
snapping them back
to bounce off the walls or the windows,
finally falling safely to the edge,

 

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Where their coils rewind
and their springs reload

Until the day finally comes
when that invisible elastic
doesn't snap back,
leaving them spiraling
downward to the street
to be smashed flat
by big bus tires.

 

webassets/Pigeon2.jpgAnd there,
their little gears
too crushed to know,
they await the rains
that will wash them
down to the sewer drains,
away from the disgust of the passersby.
 
 
 
 
 

January 1988

 

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