How Many More Times

pigeon on ledge photo by LSU DAV.

Inside the bell tower of a downtown Lutheran church, pigeons roost. They huddle in window sills or balance on the craggy edge of stones. Their brethren flutter round and round the tower in circles. It’s cold on the shady side of the north face, which is where Humfelt lays on a window ledge, keeled over to one side like a grounded boat. His eyes are crusted, and his heart flutters erratically in his breast. This will be his last day, he’s almost certain, of being trapped in the body of a pigeon. Last day of pecking at french-fries spilled on the sidewalks, of darting out from under roaring buses. Last day of flight. Last day of ascending to a perch fifteen stories above the city streets. Last day of soaring through canyons of high rises.

How long had he been trapped in the body of a pigeon? Previously he had been a floor trader on Wallstreet, then a cuttlefish, then a mercenary, then a goat, and way way back he faintly recalled life as a magician, a wizard of sorts traveling around villages with a band of other illusionists. He convinced himself from time to time that his tricks were more than just sleight of hand, but that he harnessed actual powers of nature that ordinary mortals did not share. He could make a pretty woman in a crowd take notice of him just through concentration. He could will the gold coins out of a shopkeeper’s pocket and into his own coffers. At night, when he roamed through village streets or out on the edge of town to a milkmaid’s hovel, he could will himself into her bedroom.

Now he gasps a last few lung-fulls of air on the ledge of a chapel tower. It is early spring, a time of rebirth. He wonders through whose eyes he will next look upon the world. His reincarnation had not always been incremental in time, so he’s not even sure into which world he will resurface. Will it be the late 2000’s, or will it be a wheat field in 19th century France. Will he be driving at tank in WW2, or brushing lint off his master’s waistcoat in Edinburgh mansion? A worm boring through coffin wood to get at the rotting flesh within, corporeal fruit wrapped in soil? Or will it be one of those times when he is caught between lives, trapped as a ghost gliding through the lunar mansion?

The one constant in this long thread of lives is that he remains in the orbit of his eternal lover, Rebecca. If he is a pigeon sitting on the shoulder of a statue in a city park, she is a sparrow flitting through the bare branches of crab apple trees lining the park benches. If he is a executioner operating a guillotine in a French square, she is the courtesan expelled from royal halls only to stretch her slim neck across the blade’s edge. The magician lurking outside her window. The worm boring into her grave. Will he ever have her? Yes, he has a thousand times, and a thousand times he has lost her. Which is more painful, in the end? Is there and end?