by Michael Bettencourt

Created on: July 01, 2008

PIGEON-CHASING

During our solid years we would
mend the air with our eyes for hours
waiting in the bushes for the pigeons
to take their last supper of crusty bread
under the propped-up box trailing
a ragged string and lure of crumbs.
For days we would wait in a cave
of patience and leaves and twigs
to snare the air-borne, trap the sky.
Inside, our mother, glad for her bit of free,

mended her adult boundaries in housework,
made us vigil sandwiches, prepared drink.
Our journey in small space hungered us,
calories of attention quick and embering.

Then it happened, as we were bound to,
(though we ate each second separate and
the future surprised our tongues) -
a dappled draggled scab of a bird pocking
the dirt with its stitching head,
taking down grit and bread - we found
our neck muscles pulsing in a swag,
the rinse of dirt on our teeth.
That bird ate up the space between
our eyes and the box - our looking was
a spice added to the arid bread.
Then inside.
Then the snap and the fall.
We stood in mixed exult and falter
as the bird's frightened wings beat
an intelligible morse. First I kicked,
then my brother, then my sister
(it was her foot that popped the box),
each of us suddenly outside ourselves,
our eyes tethered upward to a fading bird,
having come that close to the ordinary
and felt our own wing-bones click in fear,
our necks arch for the dirt,
heard our breath whistle through barbs
as wings beat for air, then beat the air.
We looked at one another, struck,
at the scrabbled dirt full of ridges
like the whorls of fingerprints,
or the swirls of hair starting to nap
our smooth changing skin.
It was time for food, we all agreed;
we invaded our mother's kitchen,
leapt upward to her providing.

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