A little boy in school uniform stands so still under the pine tree, staring down. A pigeon lay dead on its back. I stop and look with him. “Birds die quickly.” he says, “My birds at home die quickly. So do chickens.” I tell him that I draw dead birds and that had I something to put the pigeon in, I would take it home. He says that had he a bag he would give it to me, “It died with its eyes open.” As I am nearly home, I decide to take it with me. I pick it up. The little boy goes on his way.
The pigeon and I might have crossed paths previously. Perhaps it visited my garden, wandered about on the grass observing me as I looked out, flew above my house. I wonder about its last flight, what it saw, how it felt, and what a bird can know. I think of it in the tree above me as I walk to the shop for my paper. Perhaps at the moment that I hand over my Guardian token, the pigeon falls to the path below.Now its body lies in my room. The magenta-pink of its breast forms a soft swelling shape. I have felt for same days a need to draw. Now I am the little boy.
