From Newsgroup: rec.arts.poems
On Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:31:51 -0400, The True Melissa
<
thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:
Verily, in article <i9md3lduvu5460qif0mff00jhee1kihgq8@4ax.com>, did >Man@the.keyboard deliver unto us this message:
The Pigeons Have Flown Away.
############################
I am ever so very sad.
This morning, the many birds waited,
Nothing came.
I ran out of their food yesterday
Resolved to buy no more.
They danced on the roof of the table,
Twirling, as though viewing from a special angle
Would create the breakfast.
Then they left.
Some returned, in hope or desperation.
They found nothing.
I had promised her that I would stop.
I did.
I hope she is joyous.
The birds must think I'm mean.
And I am so very sad.
- J.
You were asked to stop feeding the birds, allegedly for their own sake,
No. I was not *asked*, not directly, but it was noted that they spill
over from my garden and pigeons are anything but latrine animals who
can be litter-box trained.
So there were *hints*. Usualy, it takes me about twenty thousand
millennia to correctly read a hint or a social cue but this one I
understood quite rapidly.
but joy has been removed from your life. I feel that.
Sorry. {{{Hugs}}}.
No one should be sad.
All Of The Birds Have Gone.
###########################
Fluttery, cooing, warm, curious,
Heads tilted in bemusement as I feed them
They are lovely
The flash lasted no time.
Her leg and left eye were gone.
She saw
The bird table was a smoldering stump
And distant shards.
There were dead things.
Dead birds.
Oh.
Burning house.
Dead people.
Dead parents.
Her family would be dead, like the many birds.
They came to help her.
Sole survivor, they said as they tended to her wounds.
She screamed a no as they tried to take her away.
We have to bury the birds.
So, they did.
In the pain-filled Sunlight they dug small graves
Filled them with carefully wrapped small lives
To each of which she gave a tiny toy
A tinkly bell, a ball, a mirror, a little doll,
Something to take with them.
She let them take her away.
To a place with no table, no home, no birds.
No family.
Then she wept.
If these two are a sequence, then I gather the poet invited his
feathered friends to dine in the basement, and then... something
happened. It's described as "the flash." It sounds like an explosion
hit.
Murder by poorly-aimed hi-tech missile, perhaps? And the bird-table
is a UKland addition to some gardens. It's like a little house with no
walls, a roof and a floor filled with food. Filled daily by a human or
more.
Birds love them. The roof keeps the food dry-ish, sometimes.
"Bemusement" is "confusion", "inability to understand", the look a
cat has when you tell her not to poke the aquarium. Pigeons have that
look when you approach them to feed them. They know that they should
run away but ... food.
She wants to bury the birds, though. Even in her injured state, that's >important to her. She cares about them, just differently than the poet
does.
Or not.
Ambulance crews tend to tend to tender human bits *first* and
tenderly. It's their thing. It's admirable and so very human.
Okay, so I know which of us has been hit harder and who has suffered
more and who should be consoled and loved and given new life. I don't
care. I am still inconsolably sad.
Both of you deserve consolation.
No.
She does.
I was just messing up the local gardens.
But thank you. :)
J.
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