Scattered troupes of seagull dancers
practice their footwork in pairs
on the part of the lawn that is Theirs,
presumably subinfeuded to them
by a peacoated parliament
of their magpie patrons, the ones
I’m told to wave goodbye! to
if I see them alone.
In the corner of my eye
a crow-clergy gathers
to discuss the salvation
of the pigeon peasantry’s souls,
or to caw-complain about the stale state
of their daily breadcrumbs.
They were better during the Boom.
The pigeons are prettier here,
sporting resplendent hues,
though some are just as homely
as their Chicago cousins
with their muted greens and blues. I wonder
if they coo with an accent
and if you dumped a Chicago pigeon
unceremoniously onto the green
I wonder would it take him
a while to learn their lilt
and I wonder if the Dublin pigeons
would try to meet him halfway,
to communicate in some sort of
transatlantic pidgin Pigeon
that neither bird could parse.
I make myself laugh imagining it
and scare a jackdaw I hadn’t seen.
Migratory woodpigeons join the local ones,
adding their wing-clap clatter
and distinctly continental coos
to the collective aubade.
I wonder when they strut these streets
if they compare the cobbles to home.
It’s spring now, I’m told. I have
no sense of seasons here.
I fear mosquitos where there are no
mosquitos and try to taste
hints of placebo winter
in the raindrops I catch on my tongue.
This morning, I saw a swan
on the Liffey. Now, aloft on a coda
of woodpigeon warbles
and the incessant demands of the dancers,
I find the temperate charm of Dublin
and remember feeling home. I wonder
if the migrant birds only go back
because they forget how bad it had gotten
before they fled. I wave goodbye!
to the last magpie and leave him
to his fiefdom on the green.
Julian Kanagy
Julian Kanagy is a Chicago-based poet and editor. His poetry samples a Midwestern upbringing peppered with loss and abandonment, thrives both in the confines of formal structure and the simplicity of its absence, and expands into an ongoing search for the beauty in everyday life when it seems to be hiding. He started Heirlock Magazine to amplify underrepresented voices and The Wild Umbrella to celebrate writing for writing's sake; both as an editor and in his own work, Julian follows the advice of a mentor: “find the poems that nobody else could have written.”
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