As Mourning Doves Persist

1. In the music is a trumpet. In the trumpet, a man’s breath. The night is littered with secrets. The path through the dark is lined with manicured hedges which someone has trimmed to resemble the cursive letters of the alphabet. Gardener infatuated with the beginning and the end. In the middle is a lone violin. The breath of the instrument is tainted with the death of a child that we realize is the fault of the crowd. The crowd hold their hands slack against their ears. I am hungry. The trumpet is playing faster. Metal shears are found in a body of water. The innocent, put on trial. The crowd has carried a piano into the court room and are splintering it into firewood to burn on the lawn. The final breaths of the sound nearly exhausted, leave only the single horn of a barge on the water. Crawling. We have made our way finally to the table to dine. We attempt to fabricate orchestra with utensils, beating the surface where the child once ate al...

The guide inside the old roller mill says: gravity fed . The kernels never crushed just tumbled. He points out the holes cut in ragged circles in the base of the wooden doors through which the resident cat can move freely, seeking mice that eat the grain in the night.  We track the river outside from its tributary origin through wooden aqueducts. To the big wheel that holds to the east wall. My companion says listen to the under sound. A thrum and a throb. This natural spill, the mother of all movement, propelling the greasy gears and the fraying belts. Wheat washed and dried and captured in centrifugal precision. Up from the basement clank and down again slide into the shimmy boxes. Pulled to its next box and spun. Silk tunnels and blue muslin stretched over tubes take their time rolling today as we tour. One single thump from metal phalange on top - like piano hammer, like heavy knife - and the dust moves down and out. Tumble and sift. White flour stripped of eve...