Anacreon’s Pigeon

The thought of home lingers

in iron feathers aligned 

to a remembered course,

only lacking direction,

you nest upon a lyre and

eat raisins from my hand.

I have never had a familiar place 

to return to, adrift to remain

in the exhaustion of flight,

no meaningful feature upon a landscape

to follow, a pointless sun.

The sudden rise and clap

of wings of disturbance in a field,

your tuneless rattle and coo,

a pigeon's omnipresence; the repulsion

of the seemingly unremarkable.

I have sought redemption,

no wine to my lips, no bread,

but blinded, have choked

instead, on love. What distances

you might have covered 

if you had departed, or the number

of soldiers you could have saved,

I wonder, even as a broken bird,

and now, my message, tied to one leg

is an apology, I never meant to

cage you, fly away then -

you were always free. 
 

Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Paillou._Pigeon.png

Also on Twitter: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anacreon_Louvre.jpg

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Études-Choisies---No.-103---Le-pigeon,_lithograf-after-Carl-Muller-by-Émile-LASSALLE-(1813-1871).jpg

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cher_Ami_cropped.jpg - the stuffed pigeon is Cher Ami, pigeon heroine of WW1...