Catch that Pigeon

[Keith]

I used to feel as smart
as a done up top button,
always sat up straight
for the spare milk.
But collars get tighter,
long days turn quietly into nights,
bath-times fall flat and tepid,
bed-times read by themselves.

I exaggerated my responsibilities,
the fountain of all knowledge,
drank my youth without immortality,
gulped down from the hard worker's
poison challis.

So now they ask and I tell them,
they ask again so I show them.
Each day my pigeon flies out the window
and returns with messages.
So I sit in the dark and read them,
I pick up my phone and I leave them,
I feed him each day with dry crumbs
and look out across the city.

He tells me what it's like,
what he's seen, the sights
beneath the freedom of tired flight
out over the skyline, down the tracks
into the country, washing high
over the coast, taking time to rest.

I turn off my desk lamp,
lock some papers in the drawer
and hope that one day he wont come back.