Flying Pigeon Quotes

He plants his feet stubbornly, adopting what he must think is an heroic post. He's just begging for a pigeon to fly by and relieve itself.

Tracy: Stop eating people's old french fries, little pigeon. Have some self-respect. Don't you know you can fly?

I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron's favorite--the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian. The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out.

I am probably in the sky, flying with the fish, or maybe in the ocean, swimming with the pigeons. See, my world is different...

Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.

Golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons in one nest Folded in each other's wings, They lay down in their curtained bed: Like two blossoms on one stem, Like two flakes of new-fall'n snow, Like two wands of ivory Tipped with gold for awful kings. Moon and stars gazed in at them, Wind sang to them lullaby, Lumbering owls forbore to fly, Not a bat flapped to and fro Round their rest: Cheek to cheek and breast to breast Locked together in one nest.

You will never see an eagle of distinction flying low with pigeons of mediocrity.

Do you ever feel lost?” The question hangs between us, intimate, awkward only on my end. He doesn’t scoff as Tactus and Fitchner would, or scratch his balls like Sevro, or chuckle like Cassius might have, or purr as Victra would. I’m not sure what Mustang might have done. But Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a marker into the book and sets it on the nightstand beside the four-poster, taking his time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic, like Dancer’s were before he died. There’s a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father. “Quinn once told me a story.” He waits for me to moan a grievance at the mention of a story, and when I don’t, his tone sinks into deeper gravity. “Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same man, and sold on the same day to different men on the eve of a great war. “The pigeons suffered apart from each other, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the pigeons feared they would never again find each other, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over men who killed one another for land. When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future.

Okay, so I admit that the first day of school I was so nervous that the butterflies in my stomach were more like pigeons flying around my insides.

Death is a pigeon flying off with straw in its beak, romance riding its shoulder as it heads for home

Aeronautical engineering texts do not define the goal of their field as making “machines that fly so exactly like pigeons that they can fool even other pigeons.

I’m going to get out. Her spirits lurched unsteadily into the air like a wounded pigeon. I’m going to get out of this wormpit of a town. And I will never, never come back here again.

Here are instructions for being a pigeon: (1) Walk around aimlessly for a while, pecking at cigarette butts and other inappropriate items. (2) Take fright at someone walking along the platform and fly off to a girder. (3) Have a shit. (4) Repeat.

Quinn once told me a story.” He waits for me to moan a grievance at the mention of a story, and when I don’t, his tone sinks into deeper gravity. “Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same man, and sold on the same day to different men on the eve of a great war. “The pigeons suffered apart from each other, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the pigeons feared they would never again find each other, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over men who killed one another for land. When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future.” He folds his hands gently, a teacher arriving at his point. “So do I feel lost? Always. When Lea died at the Institute …” His lips slip gently downward. “… I was in a dark woods, blind and lost as Dante before Virgil. But Quinn helped me. Her voice calling me out of misery. She became my home. As she puts it, ‘Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.’ ” He grasps the top of my hand. “Find your home, Darrow. It may not be in the past. But find it, and you’ll never be lost again.

A pigeon flying with the ravens will start to caw!

because you are die surface of my sky. My body is the land, the place for you... the pigeons fly the pigeons come down...

Each flies with its own kind: pigeon with pigeon, hawk with hawk.

She looked as plump and self-confident as the city pigeons outside, and as sure of her place.

Have you ever killed something bigger than a bug? Once I killed a pigeon. I love animals, but pigeons are not animals—they’re not even birds. They are like rats with wings, flying cockroaches. Spreading germs, shitting everywhere, making noises that fucking piss me off.

After 1656 the Dutch, who had gained control over the Moluccas, chose the islands that could be most easily defended. They then burned all the nutmeg trees on the other islands to make sure no one else could profit from the trees. Anyone caught trying to smuggle nutmeg out of the Moluccas was put to death. The Dutch also dipped all their nutmegs in lime (a caustic substance) to stop the seed from sprouting and to prevent people from planting their own trees. Pigeons, however, defied these Dutch precautions. Birds could eat nutmeg fruits, fly to another island and leave the seeds behind in their droppings.

I’m not free, my lady,” he says slowly. “I can no more wander off and do as I will than you can.You think of having choices like people think of flying. They see a hawk soaring and hovering and they tell themselves how nice it would be to fly. But pigeons can fly, and sparrows too. No one imagines being a sparrow though. No one wants that.

I remember back a number of years, talkin about fairs, they had a old boy come through would shoot live pigeons with ye. Him with a rifle and you with a shotgun. Or anything else. He must of had a truckload of pigeons. Had a boy out in the middle of a field with a crateful and he’d holler and the boy’d let one slip and he’d raise his rifle and blam, he’d dust it. Misters, he could strictly make the feathers fly. We’d never seen the like of shootin. They was a bunch of us pretty hotshot birdhunters lost our money out there fore we got it figured out. What he was doin, this boy was loadin the old pigeons up the ass with them little firecrackers. They’d take off like they was home free and get up about so high and blam, it’d blow their asses out. He’d just shoot directly he seen the feathers fly. You couldn’t tell it. Or I take that back, somebody did finally. I don’t remember who it was. Reached and grabbed the rifle out of the old boy’s hand fore he could shoot and the old pigeon just went blam anyways. They like to tarred and feathered him over it.

JASON: 'Intended wings.' How depressing. MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons. JASON: No - no, it doesn't. It could mean the wings were 'intended' to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they were defective in some way, these wings, so the pigeons aren't suicidal, not at all, just badly equipped for flying. Like the rest of us.

Rumors are like pigeons. They fly everywhere and make a mess wherever they go.

Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

Pigeons act like customers during sales.

He looks up. Our eyes lock,and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there.He sets down his book and stands.And then this-the moment he calls my name-is the real moment everything changes. He is no longer St. Clair, everyone's pal, everyone's friend. He is Etienne. Etienne,like the night we met. He is Etienne,he is my friend. He is so much more. Etienne.My feet trip in three syllables. E-ti-enne. E-ti-enne, E-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect. My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug.My heart pounds furiously,and I'm embarrassed,because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs. "Whoa," he says. But I don't think he means me falling. I blush and blame it on clumsiness. "Yeesh,that could've been bad." Phew.A steady voice. He looks dazed. "Are you all right?" I realize his hands are still on my shoulders,and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. "Yeah.Great. Super!" "Hey,Anna. How was your break?" John.I forget he was here.Etienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh,but the whole time we're chatting, I wish he'd return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me-to where Etienne is standing-and gets a funny expression on hs face. His speech trails off,and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, but Etienne's own face has been wiped blank. We sit on the steps together. I haven't been this nervous around him since the first week of school. My mind is tangled, my tongue tied,my stomach in knots. "Well," he says, after an excruciating minute. "Did we use up all our conversation over the holiday?" The pressure inside me eases enough to speak. "Guess I'll go back to the dorm." I pretend to stand, and he laughs. "I have something for you." He pulls me back down by my sleeve. "A late Christmas present." "For me? But I didn't get you anything!" He reaches into a coat pocket and brings out his hand in a fist, closed around something very small. "It's not much,so don't get excited." "Ooo,what is it?" "I saw it when I was out with Mum, and it made me think of you-" "Etienne! Come on!" He blinks at hearing his first name. My face turns red, and I'm filled with the overwhelming sensation that he knows exactly what I'm thinking. His expression turns to amazement as he says, "Close your eyes and hold out your hand." Still blushing,I hold one out. His fingers brush against my palm, and my hand jerks back as if he were electrified. Something goes flying and lands with a faith dink behind us. I open my eyes. He's staring at me, equally stunned. "Whoops," I say. He tilts his head at me. "I think...I think it landed back here." I scramble to my feet, but I don't even know what I'm looking for. I never felt what he placed in my hands. I only felt him. "I don't see anything! Just pebbles and pigeon droppings," I add,trying to act normal. Where is it? What is it? "Here." He plucks something tiny and yellow from the steps above him. I fumble back and hold out my hand again, bracing myself for the contact. Etienne pauses and then drops it from a few inches above my hand.As if he's avoiding me,too. It's a glass bead.A banana. He clears his throat. "I know you said Bridgette was the only one who could call you "Banana," but Mum was feeling better last weekend,so I took her to her favorite bead shop. I saw that and thought of you.I hope you don't mind someone else adding to your collection. Especially since you and Bridgette...you know..." I close my hand around the bead. "Thank you." "Mum wondered why I wanted it." "What did you tell her?" "That it was for you,of course." He says this like, duh. I beam.The bead is so lightweight I hardly feel it, except for the teeny cold patch it leaves in my palm.

Okay, I know--my superpower--I'd be able to shoot lightening bolts out from my fingertips--great big knowledge network lightening bolts--and when a person was zapped by one of those bolts, they'd fall down on their knees and once on their knees, they'd be under water, in this place I saw once off the east coast of the Bahamas, a place where a billion electric blue fish swam up to me and made me a part of their school--and then they'd be up in the air, up in Manhattan, above the World Trade Center, with a flock of pigeons, flying amid the skyscrapers, and then--then what? And then they'd go blind, and then they'd be taken away--they'd feel homesick--more homesick than they'd felt in their entire life--so homesick they were throwing up--and they'd be abandoned, I don't know...in the middle of a harvested corn field in Missouri. And then they'd be able to see again, and from the edges of the field people would appear--everybody they'd known--and they'd be carrying Black Forest cakes and burning tiki lamps and boom boxes playing the same song, and they sky would turn into a sunset, the way it does in Walt Disney brochure, and the person I zapped would never be alone or isolated again.

Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it.

A king often saw a white pigeon visiting his garden. It would fly away whenever he tried to approach it. He won its trust after great efforts and brought it to his palace. Soon after everything started going wrong in his life. He never doubted the pigeon for this. In fact he would cry before it and say, "You are the only good thing remaining in my life." How could he doubt someone whose trust he had won with great efforts?

There were no such birds in Central Park. The only birds that Skylar could see were pigeons. Dirty, nasty, flying rats that did not chirp or whistle. The sound pigeons made was more of a coo, and that was generous.

Even an iridescent pigeon at Slava’s feet—as a flying creature, arguably prone to curiosity about the gentleman invading its airspace—was more concerned with a triangle of pizza on the ground, approaching it as shyly as a girl at a dance.

The customary blizzard of pigeons wheeled briefly across the walk and settled back around an old lady who fed them from a large, wrinkled, paper bag. “I heard a guy on television the other night,” Dillon said. “He was talking about pigeons. Called them flying rats. I thought that was pretty good. He had something in mind, going to feed them the Pill or something, make them extinct. Trouble is, he was serious, you know? There was a guy that got shit on and probably got shit on again and then he got mad. Ruined his suit or something, going to spend the rest of his life getting even with the pigeons because they wrecked a hundred-dollar suit. Now there isn’t any percentage in that. There must be ten million pigeons in Boston alone, laying eggs every day, which will generally produce more pigeons, and all of them dropping tons of shit, rain or shine. And this guy in New York is going to, well, there just aren’t going to be any of them in this world any more.

You rarely saw the celebs protesting anything of substance. The Glades weren't a sexy enough cause, but give the latest blonde-haired twenty-something who'd just hit it big on TV six or seven horn-tailed, red-spotted, sticky-beaked, pigeon-toed, multi-striped tree-owls who might occasionally fly over the two-mile zone pumping millions of barrels of oil out of the ground, and suddenly she began to feel a stronger connection to the land than the Ancient Ones, the Anasazi. Two months later of course, the only red-spotted, sticky-beaked creature in sight would be the little blonde's flush face when she made it on TMZ for failing a breathalyzer test and cursing the cop arresting her, shouting the typical Hollywood star mantra: "Don't you know who I am?

No, you don't understand, naturally' said the second swallow. 'First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us...'I tried stopping on one year,' said the third swallow. 'I had grown so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it! No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste of my first fat insect. The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

The Troubadours Etc." Just for this evening, let's not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads through metal contraptions to eat. We've followed West 84, and what else? Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields, lounging sheep, telephone wires, yellowing flowering shrubs. Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them, the violet underneath of clouds. Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up: there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled— darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of their wings. After a while, it must have seemed that they followed not instinct or pattern but only one another. When they stopped, Audubon observed, they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers. And when we stop we'll follow—what? Our hearts? The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love only through miracle, but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them. Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you. Think of me in the garden, humming quietly to myself in my blue dress, a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms, though cloudless. At what point is something gone completely? The last of the sunlight is disappearing even as it swells— Just for this evening, won't you put me before you until I'm far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer— my wonderful and less than.

By the next afternoon, a shepherd boy had heard his shouts and he’d been hauled up the cliffs and confined to an empty pigeon house, the sole survivor of his doomed mission. Gone cracked, though, from the ordeal. Ranting in perfect English about dragons and a young woman who could fly. No one believed him. A few people swore the airships had suffered lightning strikes, although the night had seemed so clear. A few more vowed they’d spotted them off the bluffs and fired at them, and that had brought them down. Whatever it had been, everyone seemed certain of two things. It had not been a dragon, and it had not been the poor, tormented Duke of Idylling.

Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. Now philosophy has become mundane, and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally. But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

JAMES HALE sat at a side-street noodle-stall. The stall was set-up underneath the shade of a row of fruit trees. He watched a pair of pigeons courting beneath a fig tree. The male’s tail feathers were pushed up in self-promotion and his plumage was arrogantly puffed up. He danced his elaborate dance of love. The female didn’t look impressed. She turned her back to him. Birds were like gangster rappers, Hale thought. They sang songs about how tough they were and how many other birds they’d nested. They were egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. Posers in a leafy street. The bastards flew at the first sign of danger. They couldn’t make it on the ground. Hale hated birds with their merry chirps and their flimsy nests. Tweet. Tweet. Fucking. Tweet. The only thing Hale admired about them was the fact that they could fly. That would be cool. Right now, flying would be good.

*Gone are the days of Benton's childhood, when his sticky fingers dung through caramel-glazed popcorn and peanuts for treasure, such as a plastic whistle or BB game or, best of all, the magic decoding ring that little Benton wore on his index finger, pretending it empowered him to know wgat people thought, what they would do and which monster he would defeat on his next secret mission. *The toy surprises inside are games printed on folded white paper, cheap as hell, and require the IF of a pigeon.

It is only that I am fascinated by the postal system. It's really quite marvelous. He looked at her curiously, and she couldn't tell if he believed her. Luckily for her, it was the truth, even if she'd said it to cover a lie ... 'I should like to follow a letter one day,' she said, 'just to see where it goes.' 'To the address on its front, I would imagine,' he said. She pressed her lips together to acknowledge his little gibe, then said, 'But *how*? That is the miracle.' He smiled a bit. 'I must confess, I had not thought of the postal system in such biblical terms, but I am always happy to e educated.' 'It is difficult to imagine a letter traveling any faster than it does today,' she said happily, ' unless we learn how to fly.' 'There are always pigeons,' he said. She laughed. 'Can you imagine an entire flock, lifting off to the sky to deliver our mail?' 'It is a terrifying prospect. Especially for those walking beneath.' That brought another giggle. Anne could not recall the last time she had felt so merry.

Many birds of prey, like eagles, falcons, and vultures, actually have two acute zones in each eye—one that looks forward, and another that looks out at a 45-degree angle. The side-facing one is sharper, and it’s the one that many raptors use when hunting. When a peregrine falcon dives after a pigeon, it doesn’t plunge straight at its prey. Instead, it flies along a descending spiral. That’s the only way it can keep the pigeon within its murderous side-eye, while also pointing its head down and maintaining a streamlined shape.[*20

I know that I am wrong, that we cannot give ourselves completely. Otherwise, we could not create. But there are no limits to loving, and what does it matter to me if I hold things badly if I can embrace everything? There are women in Genoa whose smile I loved for a whole morning. I shall never see them again and certainly nothing is simpler. But words will never smother the flame of my regret. I watched the pigeons flying past the little well at the cloister in San Francisco, and forgot my thirst. But a moment always came when I was thirsty again.

I have come to your group for somewhere to belong, I promise I shall adapt before too long, I will accept anything you ask me to, I have come a long way, I have run away from home' 'But you are not like us', the pigeon said to her 'You cannot come and pretend you do, Pack your bags and go somewhere new, You can't even sing our song, This is not your home' All the other pigeons stopped talking and stared And their looks made it clear that they also shared That Romy could no longer stay and Romy felt there was no other way But to accept and fly away.

There was something about those birds in the glass aviary that was foreboding and sad. They could fly, but they had no sky. The one who had escaped- the homing pigeon- was mourned, but shouldn't he have been celebrated? He had freedom; he had escaped his predictable route between Malibu and Bel-Air and was now flying in bigger and brighter skies, with a flight plan that was spontaneous and new. And then there was the girl: I had forced myself to forget her but was only successful for an hour or two, and then she would creep back in, the way a spider returns to a musty corner of a room to spin her web.

So much of what we dream flickers out before we can name it. Even the sun has been frozen on the next street. Every word only reveals a past that never seems real. Sometimes we just stare at the ground as if it were a grave we could rent for a while. Sometimes we don’t understand how all that grief fits beside us on the stoop. There should be some sort of metaphor that lifts us away. We should see the sky open up or the stars descend. There are birds migrating, but we don’t hear them, cars on their way to futures made of a throw of the dice. The pigeons here bring no messages. A few flies stitch the air. Sometimes a poem knows no way out unless truth becomes just a homeless character in it.

Urgent Story" When the oracle said, ‘If you keep pigeons you will never lose home.’ I kept pigeons. They flicked their red eyes over me, a deft trampling of that humanly proud distance by which remaining aloof in it’s own fullness. I administered crumbs, broke sky with them like breaking the lemon-light of the soul's amnesia for what It wants but will neither take nor truh let go. How it revived me, to release them! And at that moment of flight to disavow the imprint, to tear their compass, out by the roots of some green meadow they might fly over on the way to an immaculate freedom, meadow in which a woman has taken off her blouse, then taken off the man's flannel shirt in their sky-drenched arc of one, then the other above each other's eyelids is a branding of daylight, the interior of its black ambush in which two joys lame the earth a while with heat and cloudwork under wing-beats. Then she was quiet with him. And he with her. The world hummed with crickets, with bees nudging the lupins. It is like that when the earth counts its riches—noisy with desire even when desire has strengthened our bodies and moved us into the soak of harmony. Her nipples in sunlight have crossed his palm wind-sweet with savor and the rest is so knelt before that when they stand upright the flight-cloud of my tamed birds shapes an arm too short for praise. Oracle, my dovecot is an over and over nearer to myself when its black eyes are empty. But by nightfall I am dark before dark if one bird is missing. Dove left open by love in a meadow, Dove commanding me not to know where it sank into the almost-night—for you I will learn to play the concertina, to write poems full of hateful jasmine and longing, to keep the dead alive, to sicken at the least separation. Dove, for whose sake I will never reach home.

I am listening to Istanbul" I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed; At first there blows a gentle breeze And the leaves on the trees Softly flutter or sway; Out there, far away, The bells of water carriers incessantly ring; I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed; Then suddenly birds fly by, Flocks of birds, high up, in a hue and cry While nets are drawn in the fishing grounds And a woman’s feet begin to dabble in the water. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. The Grand Bazaar is serene and cool, A hubbub at the hub of the market, Mosque yards are brimful of pigeons, At the docks while hammers bang and clang Spring winds bear the smell of sweat; I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed; Still giddy since bygone bacchanals, A seaside mansion with dingy boathouses is fast asleep, Amid the din and drone of southern winds, reposed, I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. Now a dainty girl walks by on the sidewalk: Cusswords, tunes and songs, malapert remarks; Something falls on the ground out of her hand, It’s a rose I guess. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed; A bird flutters round your skirt; I know your brow is moist with sweat And your lips are wet. A silver moon rises beyond the pine trees: I can sense it all in your heart’s throbbing. I am listening to Istanbul, intent, my eyes closed.

Sleeping on the Wing Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness, as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries 'Sleep! O for a long sound sleep and so forget it! ' that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city, veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon does when a car honks or a door slams, the door of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves and beautiful lies all in different languages. Fear drops away too, like the cement, and you are over the Atlantic. Where is Spain? where is who? The Civil War was fought to free the slaves, was it? A sudden down-draught reminds you of gravity and your position in respect to human love. But here is where the gods are, speculating, bemused. Once you are helpless, you are free, can you believe that? Never to waken to the sad struggle of a face? to travel always over some impersonal vastness, to be out of, forever, neither in nor for! The eyes roll asleep as if turned by the wind and the lids flutter open slightly like a wing. The world is an iceberg, so much is invisible! and was and is, and yet the form, it may be sleeping too. Those features etched in the ice of someone loved who died, you are a sculptor dreaming of space and speed, your hand alone could have done this. Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire. Dead, or sleeping? Is there speed enough? And, swooping, you relinquish all that you have made your own, the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake and breathe your warmth in this beloved image whether it's dead or merely disappearing, as space is disappearing and your singularity Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. (University of California Press March 31, 1995)

Speaking of shooting, my lady,” Mr. Pinter said as he came around the table, “I looked over your pistol as you requested. Everything seems to be in order.” Removing it from his coat pocket, he handed it to her, a hint of humor in his gaze. As several pair of male eyes fixed on her, she colored. To hide her embarrassment, she made a great show of examining her gun. He’d cleaned it thoroughly, which she grudgingly admitted was rather nice of him. “What a cunning little weapon,” the viscount said and reached for it. “May I?” She handed him the pistol. “How tiny it is,” he exclaimed. “It’s a lady’s pocket pistol,” she told him as he examined it. Oliver frowned at her. “When did you acquire a pocket pistol, Celia?” “A little while ago,” she said blithely. Gabe grinned. “You may not know this, Basto, but my sister is something of a sharpshooter. I daresay she has a bigger collection of guns than Oliver.” “Not bigger,” she said. “Finer perhaps, but I’m choosy about my firearms.” “She has beaten us all at some time or another at target shooting,” the duke said dryly. “The lady could probably hit a fly at fifty paces.” “Don’t be silly,” she said with a grin. “A beetle perhaps, but not a fly.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she could have kicked herself. Females did not boast of their shooting-not if they wanted to snag husbands. “You should come shooting with us,” Oliver said. “Why not?” The last thing she needed was to beat her suitors at shooting. The viscount in particular would take it very ill. She suspected that Portuguese men preferred their women to be wilting flowers. “No thank you,” she said. “Target shooting is one thing, but I don’t like hunting birds.” “Suit yourself,” Gabe said, clearly happy to make it a gentlemen-only outing, though he knew perfectly well that hunting birds didn’t bother her. “Come now, Lady Celia,” Lord Devonmont said. “You were eating partridges at supper last night. How can you quibble about shooting birds?” “If she doesn’t want to go, let her stay,” Gabe put in. “It’s not shooting birds she has an objection to,” Mr. Pinter said in a taunting voice. “Her ladyship just can’t hit a moving target.” She bit back a hot retort. Don’t scare off the suitors. “That’s ridiculous, Pinter,” Gabe said. “I’ve seen Celia-ow! What the devil, Oliver? You stepped on my foot!” “Sorry, old chap, you were in the way,” Oliver said as he went to the table. “I think Pinter’s right, though. Celia can’t hit a moving target.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she protested, “I most certainly can hit a moving target! Just because I choose not to for the sake of the poor, helpless birds-“ “Convenient, isn’t it, her sudden dislike of shooting ‘poor, helpless birds’?” Mr. Pinter said with a smug glance at Lord Devonmont. “Convenient, indeed,” Lord Devonmont agreed. “But not surprising. Women don’t have the same ability to follow a bird in flight that a man-“ “That’s nonsense, and you know it!” Celia jumped to her feet. “I can shoot a pigeon or a grouse on the wing as well as any man here.” “Sounds like a challenge to me,” Oliver said. “What do you think, Pinter?” “A definite challenge, sir.” Mr. Pinter was staring at her with what looked like satisfaction. Blast it all, had that been his purpose-to goad her into it? Oh, what did it matter? She couldn’t let a claim like this or Lord Devonmont’s stand. “Fine. I’ll join you gentlemen for the shooting.” “Then I propose that whoever bags the most birds gets to kiss the lady,” Lord Devonmont said with a gleam in his eye. “That’s not much of a prize for me,” Gabe grumbled. She planted her hands on her hips. “And what if I bag the most birds?” “Then you get to shoot whomever you wish,” Mr. Pinter drawled. As the others laughed, Celia glared at him. He was certainly enjoying himself, the wretch. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. Pinter. That person would most likely be you.

The pigeon had been unlucky. Ten birds had been on their way back to their Ilkley coop, flying in stolid, heavy formation; nine had returned home. The tenth, flying low over the moor at the base of this avian wedge, had plummeted soundlessly to the soil, its senses overwhelmed by the tendrils of consciousness which had enwrapped them. When the pigeon awoke, moments later, all of the rudimentary universal constructs which defined pigeonness in its brain had been carefully swept away, save one. The entity didn't need birdseed; it didn't need a pigeon coup in Ilkley; but it needed to fly. And it needed as much of the pigeon's cerebral activity as possible to focus on getting it to its desired location, which meant that for the first time in its life, this pigeon was reading roadsigns. It was also experiencing emotions for which it was somewhat unprepared, most notably an insistent, imperative yearning for Leeds United.

It was said that nothing would grow in a city destroyed by the nuclear bomb for seventy years. But now, in Heiwa Koen Peace Memorial Park there are pigeons flying and trees growing. It seems that no nuclear bomb had exploded...

Love is like recognition. It’s the moment when you catch sight of someone and you think There is someone I have business with in this life. There is someone I was born to know. Has that never happened to you?” “It has, but I never took much comfort in it.” - Your Highlight on page 496 | location 7599-7603 | Added on Saturday, 5 July 2014 13:09:06 “Love is like a baby sleeping on its mother’s breast,” Steppan said. “Inchoate and likely to piss itself?” “Ah, you can play at being a cynic, my friend, but I’ve known you too long. You’re a romantic at heart. You’re in love with the world.” “I’d say I’m inchoate and likely to piss myself,” Asa Love is like falling from a window and discovering you can fly.” “Unlikely to happen and dangerous to try.” “Love is like the burst of sweetness when you bite into a strawberry.” “Brief for you and painful for the berry.” “Love,” Asa said, “is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.” “How so?” “Where it lands hasn’t got much to do with who deserves it.” The priest made a deep sound in his throat, and frowned. “I think you may be confusing love with a different kind of longing,” he said,

*Gone are the days of Benton's childhood, when his sticky fingers dung through caramel-glazed popcorn and peanuts for treasure, such as a plastic whistle or BB game or, best of all, the magic decoding ring that little Benton wore on his index finger, pretending it empowered him to know wgat people thought, what they would do and which monster he would defeat on his next secret mission. *The toy surprises inside are games printed on folded white paper, cheap as hell, and require the IQ of a pigeon.

Are you going soon?' 'In seven minutes,' he said. 'Do you know what I'm thinking about now?' 'What?' 'I suddenly remembered how I used to catch pigeons as a kid. You know, we took this big wooden crate and sprinkled breadcrumbs under it and stood it on edge, and we propped up the opposite edge with a stick with about ten metres of string tied to it. Then we hid in the bushes or behind a bench, and when a pigeon wandered under the crate, we pulled the string. Then the crate fell on it.' 'That's right,' I said. 'We did the same.' 'And you remember, when the crate comes down, the pigeon starts trying to fly off and beats its wings against the sides, so the crate even jumps about?' 'I remember,' I said. Ivan didn't say anything else. In the meantime, it had turned quite cold. And it was harder to breathe--after every movement I wanted to catch my breath, as if I'd just run up a long flight of stairs. I began lifting the oxygen mask to my face to take a breath. 'And I remember how we used to make bombs with cartridge cases and the sulphur from matches. You stuff it in real tight, and there has to be a little hole in the side, and you put several matches in a row beside it . . .' 'Cosmonaut Grechka.' The bass voice in the receiver was the one that had woken me with abuse before the start of the flight. 'Make ready.' 'Yes, sir,' Ivan answered without enthusiasm. 'And then you tie them on with thread--insulating tape's better, because sometimes the thread comes loose. If you want to throw it out of the window, say from the seventh floor, so it explodes in midair, then you need four matches. And . . .' 'Stop that talking,' said the bass voice. ' Put on your oxygen mask.' 'Yes, sir. You don't strike the last one with the box, though, the best thing is to light it with a dog-end. Or else you might shift them away from the hole.' I heard nothing after that except the usual crackle of interference.

While we were standing together at the back of the basilica, there was suddenly a tremendous gust of wings. Sparrows and pigeons were continually flying around but this gust of bird was mighty and different. We looked up and there, high above the narthex, was the unmistakable, compelling face of a barn owl. Again and again, it flew and paused, franticly crashing its white body with terrible hopelessness against the dusty windows. Every so often, it would fly the whole length of the church, only to soar up again into another barrier of light. I cannot describe how unbearable it was to follow the flight of that bird, knowing that we were quite incapable to give it its freedom. There were holes and spaces—if only it could see them. Each time it failed and paused and the stillness became longer and the fearful despair of that bird felt greater. We left for the library; we couldn’t bear to be there. Later, the whole experience haunted me; the gaze of that particular bird was so involving. I suddenly thought, What if God witnesses in every man a divine spark, which flies within us blindly, like that bird, crashing in terror; punched and pounded from wall to wall, blinded by obstacles and dust? And yet, God knows that there is a way for natural freedom and ascending flight. What an extraordinary pain that witness would be.

There was one slight delay while the pilot went off in search of a thicker coat for McColl—“It’s bloody cold up there!”—and another when Plumley arrived to wish them luck. Eventually McColl and his suitcase were squeezed into the underslung sidecar, Lansley and his bombs into the B.E.12’s single seat, the propeller set in motion. The biplane drove steadily across the field, suddenly accelerated, and seemed to almost leap into the sky. As it climbed and turned, McColl could see the distant rows of lights that marked the two front lines. It was indeed “bloody cold,” and the exposed area of skin between flying cap and scarf soon felt coated with ice. McColl clasped his collar shut in front of his throat and tried to look on the bright side—he might be freezing to death, but at least he was still aloft, with an hour’s respite until the dreaded moment arrived. Or moments. If the chute surprised him and actually opened, there was still the small matter of getting down in one piece. At least he didn’t have a basketful of restless pigeons in his lap, as most of his predecessors had done. According to Lansley, hundreds had been taken into occupied Belgium, each with a tightly rolled piece of paper containing a list of questions about the occupation, which locals were asked to answer and return with the homing bird. The pilot had also told him, with a perfectly straight face, that scientists in England were trying to crossbreed pigeons and parrots, so that verbal reports might be delivered.

I read that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, passenger pigeons roosted in flocks of more than a hundred million birds. Flying in, they were said to block out the sun. One man on the Ohio River mistook the “loud rushing roar, succeeded by instant darkness,” for a tornado. Trees snapped under their weight, and when the birds finally moved on, the locals were left to trudge through the many inches of dung that had accumulated under them like a fetid snowfall.

The sun shone warm, the air was balmy; everywhere, where it did not get scraped away, the grass revived and sprang up between the paving-stones as well as on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards. The birches, the poplars, and the wild cherry unfolded their gummy and fragrant leaves, the limes were expanding their opening buds; crows, sparrows, and pigeons, filled with the joy of spring, were getting their nests ready; the flies were buzzing along the walls, warmed by the sunshine. All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other.

He rose up and up until he was high in the sky. From there, he sailed a lot of the way, gliding on the warm sea breezes.

The idea that you can be anything you want in life is not only be misguided but misleading too, no wonder we have eagles that want to be parrots, chickens, pigeons and just about everything, they have forgotten to fly - do they even know they can fly?

The distance record holder was the black and white Arctic tern, with its 22,000-mile yearly journey between polar ice caps, but in fall 2006, a team of researchers published news of sooty shearwaters captured in their New Zealand breeding burrows and outfitted with satellite tracking devices. Flying in a giant figure eight over the Pacific basin, they journey 39,000 miles a year. (The birds can also dive beneath the ocean’s surface, searching for squid, to 225 feet.) In 2007, an even more astonishing record was established by a bar-tailed godwit. Satellite tracking allowed researchers to follow a female shorebird who flew 7,145 miles nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand. In nine days, she crossed the vast Pacific, without a single meal, rest, or drink.

They have the instinct to hunt and fly,” Nancy told me, “but how to hunt, they learn. It’s as if there’s some file folder in their heads about hunting success that they learn and never forget.

In what is one of the most bizarre and ecologically damaging episodes of the Great Leap Forward, the country was mobilised in an all-out war against the birds. Banging on drums, clashing pots or beating gongs, a giant din was raised to keep the sparrows flying till they were so exhausted that they simply dropped from the sky. Eggs were broken and nestlings destroyed; the birds were also shot out of the air. Timing was of the essence, as the entire country was made to march in lockstep in the battle against the enemy, making sure that the sparrows had nowhere to escape. In cities people took to the roofs, while in the countryside farmers dispersed to the hillsides and climbed trees in the forests, all at the same hour to ensure complete victory. Soviet expert Mikhail Klochko witnessed the beginning of the campaign in Beijing. He was awakened in the early morning by the bloodcurdling screams of a woman running to and fro on the roof of a building next to his hotel. A drum started beating, as the woman frantically waved a large sheet tied to a bamboo pole. For three days the entire hotel was mobilised in the campaign to do away with sparrows, from bellboys and maids to the official interpreters. Children came out with slings, shooting at any kind of winged creature.77 Accidents happened as people fell from roofs, poles and ladders. In Nanjing, Li Haodong climbed on the roof of a school building to get at a sparrow’s nest, only to lose his footing and tumble down three floors. Local cadre He Delin, furiously waving a sheet to scare the birds, tripped and fell from a rooftop, breaking his back. Guns were deployed to shoot at birds, also resulting in accidents. In Nanjing some 330 kilos of gunpowder were used in a mere two days, indicating the extent of the campaign. But the real victim was the environment, as guns were taken to any kind of feathered creature. The extent of damage was exacerbated by the indiscriminate use of farm poison: in Nanjing, bait killed wolves, rabbits, snakes, lambs, chicken, ducks, dogs and pigeons, some in large quantities.

Imagine this exercise: You take a homing pigeon out of its roost, put it in a cage, cover the cage with a blanket, put the cage in a box, and then place the box into a closed truck cab. You can then drive a thousand miles in any direction. If you then open the truck cab, take out the box, take off the blanket, and let the homing pigeon out of the cage, the homing pigeon will fly up into the air, circle three times, and then fly unerringly back to its home roost a thousand miles away. No other creature on earth has this incredible cybernetic, goal-seeking function—except for you. You have the same goal-achieving ability as the homing pigeon but with one marvelous addition. When you are absolutely clear about your goal, you do not even have to know how to achieve it. By simply deciding exactly what you want, you will begin to move unerringly toward your goal, and your goal will start to move unerringly toward you. At exactly the right time and in exactly the right place, you and the goal will meet.

Sometimes meandering is the only way to find where you’re meant to be.

Just a few years ago,” I mused out loud, “we’d be lucky to be pedaling around on Flying Pigeon bikes. Now we’re in private jets. From there to here in less than a lifetime, it’s enough to make your head spin.

Unlike some species—crows, cowbirds, cuckoos—pigeons are not vengeful. But some part of me was eager to take to the air on behalf of these slaughtered birds, if not to avenge their deaths then to fly for the side that hadn’t committed such an atrocity.

Technique 52: Carrier pigeon kudos People immediately grow a beak and metamorphosize themselves into carrier pigeons when there’s bad news. (It’s called gossip.) Instead, become a carrier of good news and kudos. Whenever you hear something complimentary about someone, fly to them with the compliment. Your fans may not posthumously stuff you and put you on display in a museum like Stumpy Joe. But everyone loves the Carrier Pigeon of kind thoughts.

For a while, homing pigeons were most notable for their use in military operations. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, a swift-flying carrier pigeon delivered the message from present-day Belgium across the English Channel to Count Rothschild, of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who was apparently the first person in England to hear the news. The quick-thinking count made several critical financial decisions and amassed a considerable fortune based on his advance knowledge of the outcome of Napoleon’s last campaign.

Research shows that animals that play are more likely to survive, and become better parents. Rats—one of the most playful species—that are deprived of play react to minor conflicts by flying into a rage or quaking in a corner.

The new moon of a lockdown, Broken, pigeons fly, Am I the one shy guy?

The tank suffered, too, from the era’s strange mismatch between firepower and communications: it carried no radio, only homing pigeons, which could be pushed out a small opening in hopes they would fly back to headquarters.

What, then, is the end of study? For one thing, as the fate of Navarre’s Academe makes plain, it is not “philosophy” in the sense of a cloistered cultivation of the intellect and pursuit of truth for its own sake in a spot secluded from the world and from women. Nor is it “love” in its romantic sense sheltered from life’s suffering and reality--“love” with all its ritual and manners, its form and style, its fads and foibles, its “wit” and raprtee, its masks and costumes, its rhyming and sonneteering, its language of ‘Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil’d hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical.’ These things are but summer flies that blow their worshipers full of ostentation, as they did Boyet--Boyet who picked up wit as pigeons do peas, Boyet the ladies’ man, forerunner of Osric, who kissed his hand away in courtesy. Neither is the end of education erudition, the barren learning that transformed the pendant Holofernes into a walking dictionary of synonyms, nor slavery to authority and the past, the bondage that never let the sycophatic curate Nathaniel utter an idea or opinion without backing it up with an “as the Father saith.” Nor, at the other extreme, is it subservience to fashion and the present, such as made the swashbuckling Don Adriano de Armado a mint of fire-new phrases emitting a “smoke of rhetoric.

The cleverest line is delivered by Fibber as he reveals that the result of a triple cross involving a homing pigeon, a woodpecker, and a parrot would be a bird who could fly to the right place, knock on the door, and speak the message.

SKYLINE PIGEON” Turn me loose from your hands Let me fly to distant lands Over green fields, trees and mountains Flowers and forest fountains Home along the lanes of the skyway

Fly away, skyline pigeon fly Towards the dreams You’ve left so very So very far behind —ELTON JOHN AND BERNIE TAUPIN

The birds inspired me." “They may be born with wings, but they too fall before learning to fly. While they begin life amongst other birds, growing up, they must fend for themselves. Some may express displeasure, others would show admiration, but they cannot allow either of the emotions to get to them. Riding on winds and touring the sky, they do not worry about the ones who do not keep up with their pace, because if they halt to look back at the companions they lost, they will never reach the heights they were destined to. Birds do not carry excess baggage; the weight will hinder their flight. Free-spirited, they explore the skies with faith, trusting Allah to take care of them. Everything else is transient. Ibn al-Qayyim used their example and said, the heart, in its journey to Allah, The Exalted, is like that of a bird: love is its head, fear and hope are its two wings.

Why do you fly alone O white pigeon Is it for the love of solitude Or are you banished by kin You opt for the road less travelled Graceful in your flight As if you refuse to settle Until you receive what’s in your sight Why do you fly alone O white pigeon What are you seeking In this deceiving warren Are you looking for riches and gold For fulfilment of a fleeting desire Or are your eyes trained on a kind heart That will quieten your fiery flames of fire.

How beautiful is your affair O companions of the sky For you leave your nests hungry In search of food as you fly But as the day draws close It’s time to return home Bellies are full and content Your Lord never leaving you alone.

We have always had a curious connection to birds in my family. My grandfather was even called the Birdman of Havana because he kept pigeons. He named them after family members long since gone. I spent my childhood believing the birds were actually these people, simply transformed. I remember the musty, sweet scent of them. I remember the bloom of dust on their wings. My favorite was the one named after my mother. When my grandfather died, my brother set the birds free and I hated seeing them fly away. I did not want them to leave me, as nearly everyone I had ever loved had left me. But my brother said we were free like them now, and we left to cross the straits that very night.

I gazed at the birds chirping above, numerous flocks of different feathers flying back to their nests at sunset. ‘In this vast blanket of sky, with no maps and distinct routes, how do they still find their way back home?’ I wondered. But in the silent moment that followed, my question answered itself. Every heart knows where it belongs.

Imagine being blindfolded and then taken hundreds of miles from home -- perhaps even to another country across the sea. And then suddenly having the blindfold removed and, despite not having the slightest idea where you are, racing home at top speed. Even if home is six hundred miles away. That is not normal. Just like the superpowers of comicbook heroes, the homing instinct of pigeons is something that scientists cannot explain. They have tried over the years, with theories about magnetic fields and the sun, but no one has satisfactorily managed it. It is a strangely comfy superpower though. The pigeon is not on a mission to save the world. It just wants to go home. From the age of six weeks, pigeons can be taught to "home" to the loft from which they make their first flight because they understand that is where they will find food, water and company. Pigeons can be picky in their journey -- they do not like to fly at night or to cross water, often flying along the coast to find the shortest point at which to cross a body like the English Channel. but they are ultimately single-minded in simply wanting to get back to where they belong. Amid the horrors of wartime, this longing has a particular resonance.

Identify one new species a month—Go out your front door and, unless you are an experienced naturalist, you’ll see an overwhelming number of species that you don’t know. What are those grasses in the median strip, those plants in the neighbors’ yard, those hovering flies? Don’t try to do it all; just pick one thing that stands out and make it your mission to learn about it. Maybe it’s a flower you like, or the spiders you are suddenly seeing everywhere, or the bird that wakes you up in the morning.

And into the holds went: a platoon of carrier pigeons, six flyswatters and sixty rolls of fly-paper for each 1,000 soldiers, plus five pounds of rat poison per company.

But in February, the Mullahs prohibited the Basant festival, uncaring of the disappointed children who waited every year for this extraordinary jubilation, just as children in the west wait for Father Christmas. There was a formal prohibition on flying pigeons and kites. The pigeons because they symbolized the souls of Sufi saints and protected their mausoleums. The kites because flying them from the roofs invaded women’s privacy.

A grey pigeon flies with heavy wing beats across the yard. It sits on the low wall bounding the pig-sties and tries to remember what it came for.

I had allowed that little Pigeon of Hope far too much leeway, and each time I let it soar it had circled the room and come back to poop on my head. I was not going to let it fly again.

Yesterday on Boston Common I saw a young man on a skateboard collide with a child. The skateboarder was racing down the promenade and smashed into the child with full force. I saw this happen from a considerable distance. It happened without a sound. It happened in dead silence. The cry of the terrified child as she darted to avoid the skateboard and the scream of the child’s mother at the moment of impact were absorbed by the gray wool of the November day. The child’s body simply lifted up into the air and, in slow motion, as if in a dream, floated above the promenade, bounced twice like a rubber ball, and lay still. All of this happened in perfect silence. It was as if I were watching the tragedy through a telescope. It was as if the tragedy were happening on another planet. I have seen stars exploding in space, colossal, planet-shattering, distanced by light-years, framed in the cold glass of a telescope, utterly silent. It was like that. During the time the child was in the air, the spinning Earth carried her half a mile to the east. The motion of the Earth about the sun carried her back again forty miles westward. The drift of the solar system among the stars of the Milky Way bore her silently twenty miles toward the star Vega. The turning pinwheel of the Milky Way Galaxy carried her 300 miles in a great circle about the galactic center. After that huge flight through space she hit the ground and bounced like a rubber ball. She lifted up into the air and flew across the Galaxy and bounced on the pavement. It is a thin membrane that separates us from chaos. The child sent flying by the skateboarder bounced in slow motion and lay still. There was a long pause. Pigeons froze against the gray sky. Promenaders turned to stone. Traffic stopped on Beacon Street. The child’s body lay inert on the asphalt like a piece of crumpled newspaper. The mother’s cry was lost in the space between the stars. How are we to understand the silence of the universe? They say that certain meteorites, upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrate with noticeable sound, but beyond the Earth’s skin of air the sky is silent. There are no voices in the burning bush of the Galaxy. The Milky Way flows across the dark shoals of the summer sky without an audible ripple. Stars blow themselves to smithereens; we hear nothing. Millions of solar systems are sucked into black holes at the centers of the galaxies; they fall like feathers. The universe fattens and swells in a Big Bang, a fireball of Creation exploding from a pinprick of infinite energy, the ultimate firecracker; there is no soundtrack. The membrane is ruptured, a child flies through the air, and the universe is silent.

I'm not free, my lady," he says slowly. "I can no more wander off and do as I will than you can. You think of having choices like people think of flying. They see a hawk soaring and hovering and they tell themselves how nice it would be to fly. But pigeons can fly, and sparrows, too. No one imagines being a sparrow, though. No one wants that.

You felt sorry for everyone there. Even the flies, even the pigeons. Everyone should be able to live. The flies should be able to fly, and the wasps, the cockroaches should be able to crawl. You don't even want to hurt a cockroach.

I refused to think it might be something more than that, like a pardon from the governor, or the pope coming to wash my feet. I had allowed that little Pigeon of Hope far too much leeway, and each time I let it soar it had circled the room and come back to poop on my head. I was not going to let it fly again.

In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature.