the confident

i.
an old man sits on a porch feeding pigeons a stale loaf of bread. the pigeons pace around, making a community out of his front yard. Bathing in the gutters lining the streets and warming themselves on the slanted rooftop of the man's collapsing polish flat, the birds get fatter and watch the neighbourhood change, perhaps unaware that someday the old man will pass away, leaving them to migrate to a park or parking lot, forced to move along, eating garbage.

their kind is a strange one: living in community, taking whatever comes their way - they fly from one watering hole to the next, letting their large numbers protect one another. when one drops off, they will mourn briefly, but keep eating and moving. the birds that cannot keep up go alone: a one-legged pigeon hops around the bus station begging for crumbs. its friends and family have deserted him. he hobbles around looking for new circles to join. scared his days are coming to an end, he buries his face in feathers and tries to sleep on the curb of a street downtown, the noise of the city deafening.

ii.
the streets are full of people building new things.
city workers - in bright yellow vests - cheerfully crush chunks of the old asphalt and prepare a new tar. private contractors perch on scaffoldings, stack cinder blocks, saw lumber and hammer things into place. basements and storefronts are filled with ideas about the future: the old homes and foot paths will decay and be replaced by new ones: this is how we continue, no ending.

iii.
the confidence that comes from knowing his seed is strong enough to harvest a child gives him the purpose of finding suitable pasture for the future and an inability to recognize this purpose as being far from extraordinary, but still: average and empowering.

iv.
the largest blackberry never recorded was unremarkably eaten.

it grew - as most all fruits will, and managed to be overlooked by the workers handpicking its brothers until it became larger and fatter than all the others. finally, it was picked from its vine, and every person that touched its juicy flesh remarked to themselves, silently, how big and extraordinary a fruit it was. the blackberry never realizes its fate, stabbed with a fork and swallowed whole - a tasty dessert!