Virtual Ghost; Spotted Green Pigeon by Paul Bavister

Virtual Ghost

I downloaded twenty years of videos

then the headset came to life.

A good friend I’d lost touch with

appeared in the kitchen

like a bright ghost chopping veg

for our favourite soup.

I reached out to him

and when he wasn’t there

I wiped away tears

for all the years we’d missed.

He blamed the onions

and laughed at me

for being a baby.

I asked him

how he was getting on

and he let me know

he'd become confused

about what was real or not

because he’d spent too much time

staring at screens.

He was glad to come round

to clear his head

and cook us both a soup

like the good old days.

Spotted Green Pigeon

He was finally granted entry

to the museum’s basement,

where the rarest specimens

were chilled in glass cabinets.

He unwrapped the spotted green pigeon

from its soft grey cloth,

its feathers speckled with salt-white spots,

like fragments of an ancient map.

He twisted a sample from its grey flesh

and hoped the DNA report

might clear up where the pigeon came from.

His colleagues weren’t hopeful –

they theorized that the collector’s ship

left behind rats that nibbled the eggs

of the remaining spotted green pigeons,

and that was why origins remained hidden.

As he placed the last surviving specimen

back in its glass cabinet,

the researcher’s mind skimmed the oceans,

past all the known islands –

to a sandy fragment,

where a spotted green pigeon

settles down in its nest

and watches the moonlit horizon.