The Sign of the Pigeon
I tried to tell him of all the newborn bird upon my terrace knows, a thousand things I’ll never know and still it grows its feathers grow its mother knows a moment comes so suddenly when it is free. Or does it know? But I don’t know how could I know. And I, not so unlike, am best when I let things come suddenly, they flood in me. I best am met when blood in me wets bud in me. I cannot know what I don’t know. To know that I don’t know defines the way I interact with signs. Our kind of animal best shines when dancing not inside confines of lines drawn for the sake of lines.
But he is one of those, you know, the ones who don’t know they don’t know. Whose wings are waiting taut with fear. Taught to make the answers clear. And so they miss the thrill the kiss that comes with dancing far and near. And so, you see, he could not hear.
But there, inside a terrace nest, upon a mother pigeon’s breast, there rests an answer heaven-blest. The wisdom of this city pest surpasses all I could confess. Look! If you take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, there is still more you won’t know. Still more places you can go. I’d like to think I left him wrestling, compare his face to pigeon nestling on the edge of leaping before us. Knowing and Being in chorus. May I delight in not knowing for sure, as I am shooed away to the door.
Near the banks of the Pishon
Near the banks of the Pishon
I tend our dusty orchards
And watch him make thanksgiving
I find him there more and more
At the stone altar he built
To remember the garden
It was another altar
Not of stone but living wood
Where he first gave this service
All living things worshiped there
We named them all, him and I
All but the one, the center
And we grasped at that center
Grasping at equality
Or perhaps understanding
And grasping it we broke it
An incomplete Eucharist
Hoping to know the Holy
Epithet
It’s Friday, just like some Friday in the future when, I, dead and buried, will be still as God takes me apart
That is years from now, likely, but I am content to give God a head start
From the bus window I see life abundant, more that I can pull to me, over me
And I search for things to tie myself to, like the limbs of a man utterly condemned
Coronation
Was this circle empty
on a dusty hill
in Palestine
At the end of the world
did this same compass
go without use
If it was left aside
do we have the right
to leave it here
What keeps its golden bounds
from their exercise
but a bent brow
Is it not emptiest
when it sits empty
on a forehead
Out of reach of all those
who long to place it
upon their own
Saint Nicholas Avenue
Why is it that these sidewalks are more familiar
Than the sidewalks in the neighborhood where we live
Every crack, line and impression is expected
My feet find holds as if they were meant to rest here
As I climb the hill past Vittorio’s pizza
Surely, some of these cracks are new
As some of the businesses are
But each is inevitable
New chapters in a dear story
We started to tell each other
Look – the hard edges of these pavements meet
Like the edges of our several lives
A start, a stop, a start again – against
each other in near perfect fission
The weight of this meaning
Is as much in those gaps
As it is in the stones
Neil Douglas Reilly 