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A Toronto Pigeon Is Dying
I awoke the next morning but the pigeon had not made it. I never knew if it was a she or a he, only that it did not accompany the day. It reminded me that one day I would have to let go of all mornings and all pigeons. But more than my own existence I was loving that pigeon, and wishing that my hands and my heart would work through it. That somehow I could ease it into the greatest change in its life since birth. But I knew that I would only frighten it. Pigeons although apparently mingling with the public always avoided them. This man had tried to shoo it away. I came running over and said, 'Leave it alone. The bird is trying to die.' I knew that the pigeon had arrived less than ten minutes ago to die quietly by the brick. It had left the other pigeons sitting in flocks up in the crevices of buildings and on the sills. This was the area it knew best. It was born here and would leave from here. These are the two things that we must all do alone and with strength. I guarded its dying place with my foot, so that it would not be disturbed by the public. Toronto was icy and dark on a winter morning. The street people would be curled up, with the dogs in their blankets and bags. They were half awake from the cold, on the same level as the pigeon. The pigeon was also down on the street, noticed by no one. It seemed strange that Canada would have so many homeless young on the streets. It was something I would have grown to expect in the United States of the Apocalypse. But being here it seemed all the more disappointing and unacceptable. These two countries are holding hands. The USA leads Canada into urbanisation and places where even the birds can't live. It leads Canada like a little sister into the place that it went to and knows is wrong. Now it takes someone else there and Canada goes stupidly, as the borders are dismantled and boundaries disregarded. It's like the Americans who after having killed all their own animals, have come into Canada to shoot all the wildlife. They have come all winter, to take back the giant heads of moose, cougar, bear and elk, that were hunted down and murdered with fear inside them. These dead trophies speak to their dead lives. They represent the best of both worlds, a little slice of nature in their cultural wilderness. Canada says, 'Sorry,' if they don't get enough animals, and 'Sorry' to the animals and 'Sorry' to itself for being a wimp and a little sister as the big brother knocks her down. The pigeons are the wings of the buildings. They are the grey moss that grows on buildings giving them life. I went back to the dying pigeon and the feathers were puffed out a bit more. The slitty eye was very sick. The body was of a dying bird, that will puff about and surround itself with feathers as it dies. This told me that I must let the bird go and face my own powerlessness. I knew that when I died, that I would want to die like the pigeon, alone and looked into by no one. I wouldn't want puppies and kittens looking into me, as I couldn't bare to leave them. I wanted them to die first as no one else loved them in the world. I couldn't bare that I would be no longer around to protect them. I wanted no children looking at me. I wanted none of the animal abusers, and none that loved me and would be sad to see me go, hanging around. Like the grey pigeon I will know what I am doing. It will be time for me to be alone with myself, and the starry worlds that I must go into. I fought getting in and will fight leaving. I will work my body to its savage limits, for animals and the earth, until it is struck down. |
