I passed it as I walked along the main road today. Looking down, the dead bird could not look back up at me, lying still on the pavement. I did not stop – there was nothing more I could do for it; just a victim of death. Sad, but I walked on.

Walking back again, laden with groceries and other things on my mind – the noise, the pollution, the hard ground on my sore foot – I saw the bird again. It had not moved, by wind or hand, but I stopped this time and looked around, wondering at this new rush of compassion for a lost life. I put the bags down on the pavement and picked its hardened body up, turning it over to examine it: no obvious wounds, eyes shut, gossamer soft feathers touching my hands, a look of peace on its tiny head.

I carried it to a patch of bare earth and dug a hole in the loose soil, placed it reverently into the hole and brushed the soil over its body. My fingernails had dirt under them. I felt happier – it’s body would be taken into the ground, adding nutrients to the soil, becoming part of the cycle once again.

Children are taught not to touch dead things: filthy, dirty, full of parasites and germs! The signs at my local railway station forbid us to feed the pigeons, “They harbour disease”, as though we live in an aseptic bubble, afraid of infection, afraid of anything but ourselves. We have our time on Earth, and spend it in a sealed-off existence, our metal boxes on wheels, our artificially heated and ventilated homes, our concrete and our brick and our tarmac. I can still feel the soft feathers on my hands and see the soil under my fingernails.

I am connecting again.