The Pigeon Did Not Read the Room

September eighth. A pigeon landed on the kitchen windowsill at around twenty past seven this morning and stayed for what I later timed, in retrospect, as roughly four minutes. I know it was four minutes because I finished my coffee, set the mug down, and watched the whole thing without moving. Gerald's vine was maybe three inches from its feet. Gerald did not flinch. The pigeon looked at the vine. It looked at the cord. It looked at me with the specific blankness of a creature that has weighed its options and found them acceptable.

I have been thinking, since the printmaking nights and the two prints still leaning against the wall, about what it means to bring something home and not yet know where it lives. The pigeon was the opposite of that problem. It arrived on the sill with complete certainty, occupied the space without asking, and left the same way. No ambivalence. No draft-folder sentences about it. The sill was there; the pigeon was on it; then the pigeon was not. I stood there for another minute after it left, which I think is the actual subject of this post.

the windowsill after

There is a version of the early morning, the coffee, the window, the windowsill doing its quiet September thing, that I have been having for a few years now, and I thought I knew its exact dimensions. The pigeon introduced a variable I had not budgeted for. Not dramatically. Just enough to make me notice I had been standing still for a reason, and that the reason had just flown away, and that I was still standing there anyway.

coffee, window, aftermath

The prints are still leaning. Gerald's newest leaf is pointing toward the window. Some mornings give you exactly one small animal and no explanation, and that turns out to be enough.