The city buzzed beneath its dome of glass,
where vents breathed air no lung or leaf had known;
from hidden speakers came the birds of years past
—the ghosts of springs the city had outgrown.

They pulled the roots from under every street,
outlawed the nest, the burrow, and the hive;
then sealed the soil beneath the city’s feet—
no weed or wing permitted to survive.

I found her by a grate that leaked warm steam,
an ash-gray bird with iridescent throat;
she nested inside the machinery’s bad dream—
the last gray syllable of some lost note.

The crowds walked past, too hurried to take heed
of what the sanitation crews had missed.
I glimpsed her eye—that bright, unbroken bead—
and saw a world the city had dismissed.

Beneath the station stairs I brought her bread,
kept warm inside my pocket through the day;
she watched my open hand, then bowed her head,
and took the crumbs, then turned her eye away.

The cameras burned their red, unblinking eyes;
the notices warned: ORGANISMS SPREAD DISEASE.
My mother made the city’s fear sound wise,
but still I came, and still I bent my knees.

One night a storm tore loose her cage’s spring,
and up she flew through that unguarded breach;
a burr snagged in the feathers of her wing—
a seed she bore beyond the city’s reach.

The years went by. The towers blinked, then stilled.
The escalators froze, the speakers died.
Dust filled the halls their glowing screens had filled,
and rust outlasted every broom inside.

I returned to find the plaza split by rain,
young pigeons circling in the altered air,
their violet throats a bright, defiant stain—
descendants of the bird I’d cared for there.

A sign still hung, draped in moss, above the gate,
its faded letters: KEEP THIS CITY CLEAN.
Below, earth’s roots had overthrown the state;
pigeons now nested where those words had been.