Page:Rootabaga Pigeons by Carl Sandburg.pdf/158

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Hot Balloons and His Pigeon Daughters

So he was all alone with the rain and the rainstorm all around him—and far as he could see by shading his eyes and looking, there was only the rain and the rainstorm across the river—and the air bridge.

While he waited for the rain and the rainstorm to go down, two pigeons came flying into his hands, one apiece into each hand, flipping and fluttering their wings and calling, "Ka loo, ka loo, ka lo, ka lo." And he could tell by the way they began tying the shoestrings on their shoes and the bonnet strings under their chins, they were the same two pigeons ringing the door bell that morning.

They wrote on his thumb-nails in pigeon foot blue handwriting, and he read their handwriting asking him why he didn't cross over the Shampoo river. And he explained, "There is only an air bridge to cross on. A steel car drops down, falls off, falls through, if it runs on an air bridge. Change my steel car to an air car. Then I can cross the air bridge."

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