As Mourning Doves Persist

After the collective reading, mixed bag, the visiting poet laureate speaks to hangers on, his right hand holds his cheek as if he needs perhaps, a cigarette. I wonder if it’s the Rocky Mountain altitude or remnant alcohol that stakes him, dreamy and distanced, even as he stands present as if imported, fragile. Wearing the anticipated blue-gray, he pours critique and future itinerary while around him the working hosts break down the folding table and chairs. Our tired stares transport us temporarily out to sea in this landlocked state. Still, I wish that I was standing on a remarkable table elsewhere, reading bawdy song, advocating we set fire to the menus, all too familiar now. May the river of collective angst and honor take to slicing rich portabella mushrooms, grill steak, and listen instead to our wise children populating contemplative classrooms in another city, making tiny documentaries of what they see on the horizon in front of them.

As we drive straight home again, five hours crossing, you remember the moments when your father began to hum in the car. Passing an invisible ditch or bridge. Coming home to this far northern tent pole of Oklahoma. Not my mother then but a girl upright in the backseat. Temporary shelter on wheels with hard back book spine companions. You listened, on alert because your mother knew just when the homesickness would fade and the whistling begin and she signaled with a whisper. Soft grin on the preacher's face. Her nearly perfect husband. We pass the familiar, identical sign on sturdy posts fashioned from local black lava stone that marks the state boundary and evokes this spoken story. History in a hymn like the sound of wind singing through the spokes of steering. Wheel held with my hands today that will likely outlive this telling. Script scribbled in the margins of bibles, your father making his itemized lists on a Saturday before he took to the pulpit on Sunday. Today, cousins...

"Do you realize you're often having three conversations at one time" my friend tells me, laughing, as she aims to keep up. I think it's a bit like directing traffic, avoiding collision, one hand on the wheel and one in the air, gesticulating. My thoughts are generally on heightened alert. I live in a 5' 1" body in rooms built for people closer to six feet. I reach and dodge at the same time. It's just what the poet does. We come to the beach and climb out of the car. I still and quiet as if a lullaby has entered the equation. We walk the wet sand barely noticing the water as it overlaps and pulls back. We have been friends so long the conversation need not stop. Thirty years wide. We trudge and pause, build things together. My feet covered in the damp blue black sand. You wear your overcoat unbuttoned. I remember the profiles of faces of people you name, and we laugh at what we can and cannot recall. There is fog crossing over the bridge nearby, thrummi...