Life as a Pigeon (Poetry)

Perhaps you dream it’s cool —
this sky-wide freedom that I have to come and go —
no job, no millstone mortgage
no suffocating weight of desperation to achieve
anything at all except to mate —
to procreate just for the sake of passing on
genetic code.

I have no great ambition or ideals —
my life is one long scavenge hunt for meals
come rain or shine.

You think my waddle comic in the park
and throw a lunchtime crust and watch me bob
pecking through the ring pulls and the butts
of guilty cigarettes.

You do not know me — cannot recognise
me from a hundred others in the square —
our pigeon faces nameless as we crowd
for tourists and the pensioner who comes
daily for the company — pays us
with a scattering of crumbs.

You see so little of the fight —
the struggle to survive.

Every morning I am in the tree outside
your bedroom window waiting for the light
while you sleep on — untouched
by frost or night’s toe-freezing winter rain.

I anticipate what scraps from breakfast might
land briefly on the lawn —
burnt toast again, perhaps a stale waffle
that I can claim before the local swarm of starlings
shoulder in.

You imagine I don’t feel pain?
Oh! Think again!

November days the cold creeps underneath
the tightest-folded wing —
I seek out vents and huddle close
to buildings bleeding heat through brick.
I take what comfort I can find
along with all my pigeon-kind.

You see us ranged along the roof — assume
we have survival skills to beat the freeze —
you in the closed-off sanctuary of your room
can only guess at how we live and die —
what thoughts — if any — glimmer
in a bird’s bright eye.

And we’re free entertainment as we strut and preen
aimless in our world —
flight the one thing that you envy us —
lost feathers float like postcards from this ledge —
wish you were here —
the view is beyond words.