Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #112

I spent much of the early months of this year shooing away the pigeons from our backyard.

I spent much of the last couple of weeks – not too much time, don't worry – sat under a white sheet trying to coax one, just one, to sit still on a velvet cushion and telling my children to go away.

Why the change of heart? I have – to quote the U.S. poet Keith S. Wilson – become a repentant defender of pigeons.

If you haven't read his poem, "I Find Myself Defending Pigeons", check it out. "I am in that tradition of trying to find beauty and love and hope in a world, imperialistic and capitalistic, that demands of us everything but that," he says.