My ode to pigeons recently published in Empire State Verse
DEAR FRIENDS
Pigeons in flapping multitudes once blotted out city skies
until they were hunted—pigeon meat was cheap—or shot
and stuffed to adorn ladies’ hats
or killed just to thin their numbers.
Bred on rooftops, fed from the open palms of empty-nesters,
pigeons never learned to hunt. They need us as we once needed
them to carry messages, but these days all we notice
is that they unload their guano on pricey real estate,
on the manes of the lions at the 42nd St. Library,
and on the wings of the angel leading
William Tecumsheh’s Sherman’s charge
against the South in Central Park.
To get rid of them, Google recommends: owl decoys
22 caliber guns
repellents
poison
metal spikes
wire mesh
Let us remember Cher Ami, the pigeon who delivered
the message that saved 194 soldiers in The Lost Battalion during WW1.
Targeted by the enemy, Cher Ami lost an eye, a leg,
and still he flew on and posthumously received La Croix De Guerre.
When my daughter was small, chest puffed, she strutted
after pigeons, darted her head back and forth.
She knew how to coo with the best of them.
My granddaughter, raised in a rural suburb
where mourning doves and crows and jays abound,
looked up at a city building ledge in time to see
a chorus line of startled pigeons flapping away.
She clapped her dimpled hands,
and gazed up, laughing.
Close your mouth, I warned.
