Pigeon's Soliloquy

My dear avian almost-brethren, I once had the chance to impart any small piece of wisdom that might have come to me through virtue of being a great ape, complete with opposable thumbs and no tail.

But I’m afraid I failed you, my mourning masses. The rousing speech that was to come did not materialized. You flocked numbers were unimpressed. So was the boy I was with, who I suppose at the time I had hoped to impress with my erudite wit and sophistication.

The time has passed for impression upon the male of my species, if it was ever within my capabilities. But allow me to try and make amends to you, my feather-bedecked compatriots.

I must ask you, is it foolish of me to preach to you? Should I not be listening for what wisdom your cooing holds? After all, did Emily Dickenson not call Hope the thing with feathers that sings the song without words and never stops at all?

Still, I suppose our human souls grow deaf to the twitterings of Hope. We find ourselves incapable of hearing the simple sweet chirrup above the jackhammer noise of our self-induced misery. We name those who fly above us “rats with wings” do you call us who wallow below you “mistaken pigeons”?

Can you downy huddles forgive your fallible cohabitants of this Earth? As you peer down from the great heights of your soaring can you show us the benevolence a patient adult might show an unruly child?

See the young pair in the park, quoting Shakespeare to each other? Can you tell me what might become of them? Surely you world-weary pigeons have seen many an ill-fated pair out for a stroll in the park.

But alas I fear that even if you know, it is your secret to keep behind gleaming dark eyes set in your ruffled slate gray heads