Perry L. Powell’s most recent poem to appear here was “Skin” (January 2014)

The Pigeon
By Perry L. Powell

Dirty bird in the park
your coat of city trash and soot
gathered on the square in your corporations
demanding bread from a homeless man
and not flying.

When the hawk no longer flies,
when the nightingale goes quiet,
when the robin dies,
your kind will inherit the earth
though you are not meek.

Your cousin the white dove
is cut from the world by the glass air.

I know your kind too well,
you and your adaptations.