slow motion, continued

the fan blades languid, moving air overhead at minimum speed, as if in homage to noir.
not summer yet, but getting there.

a bird flies in through the open door.
a pigeon, its beautiful, powerful wings beating incredibly slow... i count five beats from door to fan.

i am being shot on a bolex at seventy two frames a second, i want to scream out a warning, but there is no time and it's silent anyway, everything is incredibly slow and vivid but is over in a flash, relativity is doing its stuff with zeal...

there is contact between pigeon and fan blades, but not fatal.
since s/he was planning to perch, it was the tail feathers that got the chop.
the rest of her flew out of the door again in one piece,
as a slow confetti of feathers drifted onto the bed.

the piegeons are used to perching on the fan all winter,
disurbing my writing with their clanking claws and love talk
whenever i happen to be at home.

maybe they're attuned to the rhythms of ceiling fan usage like they're attuned to the seasons.
maybe the fans switched on far too early...
maybe,as the globe keeps warming, there will be more kamikaze pigeons
and feathers will drift down onto unmade beds
in the poetry of unnamed deaths...