I’ve been observing birds
For a few hours, today, this
Early spring day, late in the afternoon.
Most prevalent are the Mourning doves

On the street above my dead-end street
Are a couple of houses I can’t see,
Just their roofs, and their trees.
The most interesting trees are three tall firs
And a huge pine. Behind them, on the last level
Above, lay electric poles and thick-cabled line.
Eighteen rows of wire hang, altruistically,
Energetic, yet docile, servants to Man.

From my chair, I see three or four male doves
With territory to defend. They coo lowly, what
To me sounds like ‘sticks and stones’, with
A lowering double accent on ‘and’, ‘sttickss
Aand stonessss’, sticks and stones… Maybe that’s
What my grandmother heard, and hated, about
Mourning doves, for thirty long years of retirement.
I bought a terra-cotta dove in her memory, lovingly.
Before I knew…

The big pine is the focus
Of my attention, along with its defender.
The three tall, skinny firs to its left
Are apartment buildings, the pine itself,
a house, taking up a large area of ‘air realty’
with its spacious sweep of limbs and rooms.

In the Apartments, starlings and sparrows
Twitter and twill their non-stop gossip. Some
Squabbling breaks out, occasionally, but,
All in all, the Apartment occupants are happy.

The doves, however, are not, not yet. Not my dove,
Anyway. Not the one above, nor the female out back
Who forever mourns the slaying of her mate,
By my cats, two springs ago. On second thought, maybe
That’s what grandma heard, the sorrow in a dove’s coo,
Year after year after year…

It rained slowly, this afternoon, a mourning, life-giving rain.
Cloud castles scud the sky, created by seas of wind currents.
Repetitively, a stranger dove lands in the pine, or near it,
On a wire. The defender dove takes flight, and a chase ensues,
And gains, living space rights. Twice, I heard the thunk
Of one feathered body upon another, a strange, hollow sound.
Behind these two rivals, in the background, a pair mate,
On cables of electricity and fate, fluttering frantically
with imbalance, in a state of future...

Back into view comes my dove, it stiff-wings around the tree,
And, being the victor, it roars, in its manner,
With a guttural strung-out ‘Ggcaaww, ggcaaww’.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 3/28/06