Pigeons, mating
Photo credit: Rajesh Balouria / Pixabay

Unselfies: A Poem

05/10/26

Pigeon Porn and other signs of Spring

Snow-defying witch
hazels light their zest-scented
early yellow flares

Thousand-mile migrants
on just-thawed ponds glide past red
ice-rescue ladders

Atop stopped female
male sparrow hovers in place
beating blurry wings

Pigeon on pigeon
making more pigeons. Can there
ever be enough?

Newly weaned, sun-blind,
hunger-driven, three lean rats
chance a curbside brunch

Tightly furled beauty:
Twinned ranks of cherry trees tense
on the brink of bloom.


  • Gerald Jonas is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as other journals large and small.

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