There was a sudden and prolonged smattering –

some of the chimney’s ancient debris

falling lightly to earth – in the grate

close to my desk, then a clattering

against the metal back of the gas fire,

a shuffling of feathers, a scratching of claws.

I stopped writing. I guessed that a top heavy

wood pigeon – one of a number that perches

unsteadily on our gutters and ridges

and chimney pots – had toppled down the gloom

filled now with the rattle of broken brickwork.

To disconnect the gas, unscrew the fire

from its backing plate and have the dazed brute

flap around the laptop or find the creature

entombed beneath a tumulus of grime

was never really an option and yet,

for days, with the continuing chatter

of falling bits of masonry the bird

might have set bouncing off the brick-lined chimney,

my conscience was troubled: there was something

uncivic taking no action about what,

by then, must have been a death in a hearth,

putting aside the seeming indifference

to the dying. But supposing I had been

some latter day, domestic Howard Carter

and opened the tomb, filling the room with soot,

and found the bird had flown?