Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Oct 2013
It is not until my parents leave my brother and I to wander about the Musée d’Orsay

on our own tick tock desire and dollar,

where we take in the sunset and clock frame I recognize from a black and white photograph my mother took when she came

herself, and I almost trip over the rope that protects a Monet—

“Excusez-moi!” I almost scream—

that I am left to breathe in Paris at my own pace.



Perched on a stone bench high enough

that I have to awkwardly throw my body onto the slab

like I’m a sacrifice to the gods of love,

I chew on some ham pressed

between some lettuce and two halves of a baguette,

and I throw the breadcrumbs,

at first caught in my hair,

to the birds,

the ones who wander around the courtyard of the museum,

waiting for fools like me to feed them after viewing great art.



Some are gray with white tips

at the end of each feather, and others

have their heads cloaked in navy blue,

almost black,

as if they

splashed into a River Seine full of paint,

and it never washed off

their plump,

yet delightfully light

bodies.



And the paint stretches down,

surrounds their neck like a

lion’s mane that darts into the same

gray that paints the sky

in the winter Hemingway described

to me in his book.



Raccoon stripes wrap around their wingspan,

and their eye contact

is like that of a Hitchcock psychopath

who wants to ****** me for

not sharing my sandwich.



I am easily guilt-tripped by the pigeons of the world,

and Parisian flutterers

are no exception.

I rip off bits of my sandwich to throw to the grounded creatures

caught in a plight of hunger outside the museum.



They pluck at the chunks too big for their beaks,

and I slide off my perch

to meet and greet with the birds,

flustered by the sudden supply of bread crumbs

and who peck and beck towards me.



I hear laughter, but it sounds old,

and I turn to face the security guard

who shakes his head in his seat, chuckling at me.



His smile is young, but his badge is *****,

like the street outside the metro stop for Notre Dame.

His duty makes him speak French, and I mumble English in return.



“Madame, please don’t feed the birds!” he laughs, and I push

my bread back down into my bag, embarrassed as an American in France can be.



I kick my feet up to hurry the pigeons away, and they fly up around me, like

a wave of the black and white color spectrum, caught up in the next surprise.
Jules Wilson
Written by
Jules Wilson  Nashville
(Nashville)   
  2.0k
   ---
Please log in to view and add comments on poems