I saw a pigeon die today.
It was huddled on the pavement as I walked through the underpass
and, taking fright, took broken flight and landed in the road.
I could see its wing was injured.
A car swerved round it
and I was just trying to decide
if it was worth risking my life
to rescue a bird that would probably die anyway
when a lorry swooped by,
leaving a sad squash of blood and feathers
which another truck flattened still more.
All flesh is grass, I know,
but this brutal intimation of mortality seemed an obscenity,
an evil aberration,
turning something whose flawed flight still had something of the west wind in it,
into this ugly stain upon the roadway.
Death stands ready all the while,
ready to pounce upon the wary and the unwary.
It would be comforting to imagine that broken bird
flying unbroken in paradise.
Perhaps it's true.
The meaning of our lives is here
on this world nevertheless,
and broken as we are,
we minister to each,
beneath the juggernaut wheels of uncaring time.
05/12/02
