​Pigeons

John Guzlowski

My father dreams of pigeons,
their souls, their thin cradles
of bone, but it is their luck
 
he admires most. A boy in Poland
in a dawn all orange and pinks,
his hands opened like a saint’s
 
and taught those birds to fly, to rise
on the air, their wings beating
the rooftops into flesh, into dreams
 
of angels above the crystal trees.
And later in the gray dawn clouds
blowing about him in the camps,
 
where not even pigeons were safe,
where his body, thin then,
like a shoelace, sought other dreams
 
other bodies, and found only
the comfort of worms—even then
he could still remember
 
the birds without chains,
breathing quickly and cooing
“We are going, we are going.”
​