The Visitor

One of the things I love about my 9th –floor condo is its large windows and open long view. I have curtains only in the bedroom and no screens. I think I must be a bird inside.
Lately, I’ve been taking advantage of the respite between our long summers and reasonable but chilly winters to open every window and leave them open. After all, I’m up so high, there’s no danger of someone coming in. Or so I thought.
On the night in question, I entered, dumped my bag in the living room and headed through studio toward the kitchen with my box of leftover Fritti pizza when a fluttering of wings startled me as much as my entrance must have startled the pure white pigeon now poised on the kitchen counter and eying me nervously.

(NTS: never leave condo without clearing counter for possible photo op.)
And by the way, isn’t it nice to arrive at a point in life when curiosity outweighs fright? The first thing I grabbed was my camera.
I’ve given respite for birds that stun themselves on the plate glass windows and doors on the ground level, and once lost a parakeet named Weego to an insufficiently closed door and open window, but I’ve never been visited from on high, as it were.
I really wanted the bird to stick around, but despite posing for me quite patiently, it was clear it wanted out. The shot of it on the bookshelf is my last. I “shepherded” it, unhurt, to the now fully opened studio window where it stumbled out.
White pigeons, which are doves, represent peace, ascension and forgiveness. What a gift.