The Visitors
by D. A. Powell
听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 The terrace, filling
up with wings, a coo, a coup
of quiet beauty, iridescent
feathers in the potted nasturtiums,
scat and scatter of fat pigeons
smiling the way a bird can seem
to speak through its beak, but
staring through that third eye
lid, the translucent membrane
that still sees all, transmitted
to bird brain, the all-knowing
eye of God, surveilling, winging,
wailing, judging the scraps put
out for sparrow and jay alike,
alighted instead the grayish
dove, the stocky stalker, the
doesn鈥檛 talker, the feral guise
of heaven鈥檚 minion: the pigeon,
arriving in judgment, arriving
in numbers, leaving the ark and
never returning. What did they
find on the rocky outcropping that
made them decide they were
better off without us, what
made them doubt us, what made
them hide. Oh pigeon, it鈥檚 wet
out, you鈥檇 best come inside.
In my graduate poetry class, we were writing to prompts based on shufflemancy鈥攍istening to a playlist on random shuffle and letting the song that came up next determine the writing. I was using a disco playlist I had compiled and I would get the song a week ahead of class so that I could give some guidance about it. But other than that bit of preparation, I let the vibe of the music sort of take people wherever it would take them. And, because I firmly believe in never asking students to do something that I myself wouldn't do, I would write along with the students in class. So this particular week the song was "The Visitors," the moody paranoid song by Abba with the thumping bassline that sounds like someone pounding at the door. The song is about a possible alien abduction. Or maybe it's just about how the mind funks with us. But in either case, I didn't want to dip into the darkness. Instead, I thought of the many birds that visit my fire escape when I am painting. Of course I always want there to be parrots. Sometimes there are. Or finches. I want interesting birds. But many times it's plain old pigeons that come to my window. In the poem, I'm both charmed by the birds and annoyed by them. And I thought that this was perhaps a deeper story about how we (humans) are generally with visitors. I don't have a full explanation of what's going on. It's a mystery. Like Abba. But knowing me (and knowing you, dear reader)...it's the best I can do.听
D. A. Powell is the author of five collections of poetry, including Chronic, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Repast: Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails.听 Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys received the National Book Critics Circle听 Award in Poetry. He teaches at the University of San Francisco.