FEATURED- From the Banging Inside My Head

www.BellevillePride.com
by: Tess Farnham/ MetroEast NEWS

January 23, 2011

(BELLEVILLE)

From the Banging Inside My Head to this Mostly Imperfect Draft

What the Pigeon Sees in Passing

And as if by synchronicity
I see her on the one way street,
Flitting fiercely in a broken body,
One indigo wing still intact,
One dragged across the snowy pavement
Its imprint brushed in the iridescence
of a last dance

The curbsides are packed with the cars of strangers,
In varying stages of disrepair, another
is steady in its movement towards my tail light
. . .In the meantime, I am reminded
of having been down this road with a starling. . .
watching her move from tree to tree
with a tumor on her throat

And in turning back,again I see the solitary form
Stumble into the road
Just emerged from temporary refuge under a silver Chrysler
The one wing still moving madly against
The fallen sky

And I wonder what the pigeon sees
As she is passing:
Days of swooping past pedestrians
To poop on the bayonets
of soldiers standing guard at the war memorial;

First sex in flight
over the rose
window of an urban cathedral;

The first nest carefullly tended in the
Rafters of some abandoned
sky
Scraper, and the tiny cries
From fledglings as they bent the grass
In their grand attempts
To defy gravity


Rage rage against the dying of the flight
I say to the side mirror
the car still idling at the stop sign,
its interior
so very cold and glowing inside
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About the Author: Tess Farnham is an Adjunct Professor of English Composition at Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC) in Belleville. Ms. Farnham is also an accomplished Artist and offers her original works and reprints for purchase online. (TESSILU STUDIOS) She has also served for two years on the Board of Directors for the Daniel McCree Foundation, as well as contributing writer for MetroEast NEWS. Tess Farnham