As Mourning Doves Persist

Rising from a slice of dark night  crow and hobgoblin dreams of doubt, a petite bright eye turns over in her crumpled morning nest. There we witness the work of trickster dared who has plaited and placed a whimsy crown atop the unconscious slumber of this precious nuthatch noggin. Is this an exercise , starling coos, just waking unanticipated occasion to be other, taller, more majestic? I needed a little trim , she warbles to herself, just to take the extra away  but instead  this natural extension, perhaps, is the pristine, greener me .  Imagine what the pufflings and keet will make of me now , formerly hidden within the party, wishing secretly instead  to wedge with swans. (for my friend)

Morton repeats his stories of naval days again to no one in particular as he chain smokes in the room where we are seated.  I was on the USS Missouri when  the Japanese surrendered, and there are  the black and white photographs on the wall to prove it, he sputters pointing with the tip of his cigarette. Though everyone in the photographs is about one quarter inch tall and I had little to no knowledge of history much less ships or sea despite a decent high school education.   His wife holds an ice cube to my left ear as she prepares to pierce the virgin lobe.  Their son, my crush, cruises the neighborhood to score a five-finger baggie of grass which will likely be mostly stems and seeds. Back then we were only so particular.  Morton is three sheets to the wind at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and gets mighty angry when interrupted. Their charcoal myna bird in a cage in the corner of the den repeats family expletives. After a while this isn't cha...

Begin with the sounds of my husband in the kitchen pouring freshly boiled water through a beige paper filter that folds over and hisses just the tiniest bit in the insignificant mishap. He yelps like he does to himself, and even from two rooms removed it irritates me like he’s a person touched and unstable, and I get up and shut the door to my study and pretend I don’t know him and am anywhere else where the coffee is dripping perfectly or waiting for the lightest press of palm against top against spring, against ebony grounds, and an aroma of pungent perfection is squeezed heavenward; Start again. The full, running water in the bathroom where our daughter showers, the most Olympic shower in the history of twenty-one-year old girls, like swimming the length of two oceans to achieve both cleanliness and a certain sheen of muscular endurance raising her arms to lather and rinse, lather and rinse again;  straining the patient endurance of her parents who, when the utility bi...