December 11 has been one of those perfect San Diego days. My bike ride today took me along the San Diego River out to where it meets the blue Pacific. The ride ends with the jetty in the photograph above. The place is like the photograph: It's hard to tell where the land and river and sea end and where the sky begins.A colony of cats has been living along the jetty for the twenty years that I have been going there. I have no idea how the first ones got here and how many there are. Today more than a dozen were lounging, the way cats do, on the big rocks along the river. They were obviously enjoying the rocks that had been warmed by the sun. A couple of people come every day with food for the cats.And there are pigeons. I sat with my camera and the pigeons walked right up to me as if to introduce themselves. The brown one was a little skittish. The darker one was bold, even cocky. I was reminded of two things: the poem by Carl Sandburg and the experience of my friend who kept pigeons on the roof of his house when he was a boy growing up in Baghdad.
PIGEON
By Carl Sandburg

THE FLUTTER of blue pigeon’s wings
Under a river bridge
Hunting a clean dry arch,
A corner for a sleep—
This flutters here in a woman’s hand.

A singing sleep cry,
A drunken poignant two lines of song,
Somebody looking clean into yesterday
And remembering, or looking clean into
To-morrow, and reading,—
This sings here as a woman’s sleep cry sings.

Pigeon friend of mine,
Fly on, sing on.