OF PIGEONS AND TURTLE DOVES:

The urban burden of litter, critters & old mean rats,

Of the oily streets, gritty kerbs & stinking hungry cats,

Of bats clinging in cloisters, of monks & chanting nuns,

Overflowing bins, spewing old papers & half eaten buns.

Is it only me who can see the beauty of old grey towns?

At new dawn before the emergence of all human clowns,

Before car & man turns the day into rushed moving hell,

I sit in the plaza, awaiting the tolling of chapel´s first bell.

This place of old stone where the cold fountains spray,

I sit & watch simple feathered ones at their joyful play,

The humble pigeons & the cooing of sweet turtle doves,

All strutting for crumbs, before flying to old eaves above.

They´re not peacocks or hummingbirds jeweled & gaudy,

They´re not exotic ostriches, nor eagles mightily bawdy,

They´re just simple little birds of pavements old & grey,

Those you pass without a glance on every working day.

Just pigeons & turtle doves, without fine plume or name,

With no voices of angels to take them to feathered fame,

Merely feathered friends of early & solitary urban dawns,

I welcome their quiet friendship in my every waking morn.