Piegons on church roofs

Photo: Toronto graffiti, November 8.

~~~~~~~~~~

We're walking down Queen Street by the park and she says, "Look at the pigeons."

We always see them flying in formation from office tower to church roof. Lining themselves up again like an arrangement of beads or used auto parts, seeing if this one works. We're always standing in formations, trying to refract light. If we all stand together maybe it will bend another way. We're listening to truths slanting through stained glass windows. Look at the dust specks flying in formation, a crowd of angels that could ride on a pin. Look at them swirling. They're better at randomness than pigeons or people, these angels of light. Twelve pigeons rise into a cloud, singing muted hymns. The rest are left standing as if the thunderclap never happened.

Dawn stabs like a knife and we rise screaming to the tale of another day. Where are our pews? We walk along alleyways, corridors; rats in a maze. The new day brings puzzles for the higher mind to analyze. Is the universe testing us? What will be the new colours of your skin this season? Your eyes? How shall we line them?

We dress in hats and go fabulously down the aisle, waiting on queens and kings we have made out of papier maché. Yes, we build them from whatever we have at hand. If we have dirt and water, we make brick gods. Throw in a little straw for texture. If we have wars, we make war Gods, and if we have a ripe harvest of young people this year we can throw them in and worship them as they die.

On a better morning we might have roses blooming and offer them to a friend, saying, "Here is my love unfurling." With plenty of olive branches we might turn into doves and fly about the city, bearing them in our beaks, cooing and shitting. Or stand still on steeply sloped tiles, while workmen polish the steeples with steel wool and acid wash. Now they're scrubbing with a toothbrush. Conservators travel around neighbourhoods picking lint out of cracks in our walls and pounding it into fiber we can weave into garments. Then the houses will all be clean and we can say we live in an upscale district.

Somewhere deep in the cataract we still like drowing. One day we're rowing along and she says look at that bird, big dark wings against the sky, not like a pigeon. In fact it's an osprey, carrying fish to her young on top of a light standard in the little harbour, the nest woven from driftwood sticks. We follow to see what she will do, but words follow faster.

Then we remember to open our dictionaries and look for new meanings. But we always choose the first meaning. Why do we do that? Why can't we absorb the second and third, the subtleties and layers of language. Rising from our pews on pigeon wings we always resort to the same jargon. When we walk out the door, we ought to go make love among the junipers and startle a few parishioners out of their torpor. Maybe if we made love the way it is supposed to be, we would be too busy to fight over bread crumbs cast by a bitter old woman in the sky near her feet where they rest below the park bench.

A hot dog vendor is standing there. She wears a grey silk scarf, and smirks when the mad woman walks past, shouting blasphemies at the sky.