A collection of poems and other writings...

Monday 23 June 2014

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?




No comments:

Post a Comment