& how when we left there was a white-haired lady, funny in the parking lot, feeding pigeons with the bread from her fanny pack, in front of a big truck she paid no attention to though it was waiting for her to move & my eyes caught a flood & I turned looking for someone who would understand I’d just seen my angel throwing bread down to the pigeons just kindly, slowly. & you, without my saying a thing, as if you heard the chest its joy & cardinal, you said yeah, just that. How marvelous. Ordinary. To get to see & turn around, & know somebody else was seeing, too. One day it will be otherwise. I always meant to thank you for that. Thank you. What is close to my heart is that woman, that city, you, that noon on the dry land dressed in pigeons & daylight, the dry land dressed in our brief lives, our lives brief & miraculous, as the bees.
— Aracelis Girmay, from “Central City Senior Center, New Orleans,” Kingdom Animalia
