As Mourning Doves Persist

What if the finches drop straight down through the branches like perky, agile acrobats? Such cat burglars. What if that duet of invasive squirrels stop when they spot me watching them trying to move in, and run back into their hiding place behind the folding screen on the porch where my daughter’s photograph is plastered larger than life and she’s wearing the christening gown that we all wore. Five generations of holy water. What if the sound in the night of a stainless steel serving tray tumbling to the cement wakes us? We will know that the rascals are at it again tipping to raid the seed bin, and the birds will need to make more noise to hold on to their sky climbing stick country. The tree’s arms scratching the roof for as long as I can remember. My daughter frightened by the sound in her bedroom as the natural movement carves the dark.

for eb Camera slung at the shoulder and a ledger of bikes that lean, yours is a chronicle of agave. Spines holding water. I would recognize you in the dark. The white spines of diaries, evenly matched on your shelves. Your whole  heart beats her wings. You are witness. You are prayer. Your home is your ribcage. Is a garden of surprises where morning  glories mix with your black Spanish hair.  Through the grass comes the sound  of your laughter. You spill before saints  and apostles. We stand ready to listen.

The yard is swathed in blossoms. Ornamental plum come full circle, its leaves like paper revisions discarded to this season with pale burgundy droplets falling. As if to sound breath’s arterial thread through the body’s old canals. This honey powder hint. Responsive in breeze. Transparent feeder empty against the tree where holiday lights remain in sunlight. Spark of what comes next.   Crab apple or apricot. Promise of patient daughter. Her pockets.     Yet as I watch this morning there is no one out there and no picking yet except to spy the subtler pigments – pink and white and hint of tan peering from the tips of tributaries. One branch you’ve tied together at a bend as if we know something of grafting. Or, simply, set out to repair what’s gone absent with brittle memory. 

1. Where does the boy end and man begin? From hurdle runner and high dive lifeguard to yoga, low to the beach. 50s flat top gives way to bellbottom 60s and a 70s home overrun with blonde toddlers. Boot straps to Birkenstocks, and still, that timeless Methodist collection plate and Golden Rule remain a wafer in your blood, father. 2. You tried to teach me arithmetic once and yet, what we discovered together was a rock and roll song, a highway where everything got done. 3.  Think calculus, in thigh high waders against the cold. Casting out into the sun drench, deducing change where man ends and the boy begins again.