Distance, soft as sickness, holds you close, and you think about white birds transported in cages, ready to fly home. You think about how they know: science, biology, magnetic hearts. Their little pigeon-rhymes remember landmarks: water-towers; pylons.
There are solar flares; there is the moon.
It must be a strange imbalance, the tide-pull, the dragging weight. Blood in veins, unsettled. You’re acquainted with hope’s persistence, uncertainty’s churn, and you know how particular weathers might blow a bird off-course. Radiation. Eclipse. Power lines and predators.
Through circuitous routes, birds get lost.
But imagine that final stillness of arrival! The warmth of hay, the beating of a slowing heart. Imagine a darkness where everything knows its place.
How home must feel, to one who knows.
Lovely!
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