Dead Pigeon

This beautiful drawing was made by Erika K Harada.  Find her blog here

There is

a dead pigeon

on the kerb today.

I doubt this pigeon

knew

this morning

as it flustered from its roost

under the railway bridge

to breakfast on

cold, strewn fries

that today

would see it

split from gizzard to cloaca.

Some angry, car-clad man,

fresh from the defeat of being

merely human,

has maybe come barrelling down the highway

and chosen to be less than human

to this slow-witted, paltry bird

and now

here it lies, 

spatch-cocked,

served with a side order of

starburst wrappers and grit.

Gristly tubes of stuff

spoiled out into the gutter,

a deep abyss hiding

within the feathered wound

where some internal animus

has at last found escape,

and allowed its

homing instinct full sway

- a soul’s seedpod split

and spent -

leaving a hollow husk

and a flurry of down

blizzarding along the kerb.

And Ruth tells me that

The Boys at School

would catch a random,

slow moving,

claw-stunted bird

such as this

and stuff it

into an empty carrier bag,

then toss it casually

under the wheels

of an approaching bus

to laugh at the

helpless popping

of the fragile carcass,

the splintering bones

and the instant cessation of

a life

so insignificant it is deemed

a suitable play thing,

a plastic counter

to be flipped with derision.

And we are human,

is it not so?