What changed my life one day was that I heard
what happened one hundred ten years ago
from one who owed her being to a bird.
Your first reaction hearing this: absurd,
right? How could that be, and how could she know?
I was suspicious too until I heard
about the village razed, survivors stirred
to action. World War One. You may well know
about the war, but not about the bird.
They used a homing pigeon to send word
to the next village, “Grab your kids and go!”
This saved the population since they heard
in time. Her tale continued. She assured
me that her grandfather, age ten or so,
lived in the village rescued by that bird.
Being both history buff and nature nerd,
I can’t help but report, not that we owe
these pigeons in the park, but what I heard
of owing one’s existence to one bird.
James B. Nicola is a returning contributor. The latest three of his eight full-length poetry collections are Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale, James has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice magazine award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful.