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This poem is the ballad of a one legged pigeon.
A gray male with a cloudy eye and oily feathers
flying in front of the sun,
moving as a shadow across a paved lot
beside where the tattered bums make thier beds.
The pavement is hot,
covered in sharp black pebbles
that are more abrasive to a child’s bare feet
than the blacktop’s searing heat.
The lot was repaved eight years ago,
after too many tiny cracks
too many times
harbored a warm February day’s
meltwater that refroze and busted the cracks
making more cracks.
The damage was,
as always,
exponential and the hospitable pavement never learned its lesson.