One-Legged Pigeon
In a flock on Market,
just below Union Square,
the last to land
and standing a little canted,
it teetered—I want to say now
though it's hardly true—
like Ahab toward the starboard
and regarded me
with blood-red eyes.
We all lose something,
though that day
I hadn't lost a thing.
I saw in that imperfect bird
no antipathy, no envy, no vengeance.
It needed no pity,
but just a crumb,
something to hop toward.
just below Union Square,
the last to land
and standing a little canted,
it teetered—I want to say now
though it's hardly true—
like Ahab toward the starboard
and regarded me
with blood-red eyes.
We all lose something,
though that day
I hadn't lost a thing.
I saw in that imperfect bird
no antipathy, no envy, no vengeance.
It needed no pity,
but just a crumb,
something to hop toward.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Princeton University Press, "One-Legged Pigeon," by Gary J. Whitehead, from A Glossary of Chickens: Poems, (Princeton University Press, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Gary J. Whitehead and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.