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Sighting Sound

This morning I awake to just a hint of sound. A whirring and a whisper rising carries me back some fifty years, every time. The sound is the sound of birds. Purring sounds found even in the center of a sliding car pound punctuated/workman interrupted town. The fugue fleshes out with the pour and stir of mourning doves in the backyard. I don't know how near or far they are, but I know that they only visit sometimes. Or perhaps I only rise slowly enough on rare occasion to recognize the sound.

Their melancholy brings perfectly to mind the recall of childhood naps. Naps in the cozy homes of grandparents who babysat, respites in eastern New Mexico, where the air was so dry that when rainfall did pitch the night, we scoured the gutters for the morning's treasures swept up and left there. Little could we have known that our world was coming undone as our parents grew up and outgrew each other. Still, their parents maintained a calm that was unflappable. Short naps in single beds under the protection of pheasant wings hung on the wall as shiny trophies. Or naps in a half lit room with a bigger bed and the durable perfection of grandmother's hair clips, curly and straight, on the polished vanity, closets and corners to explore, though we swore we would sleep the allotted half hour or more. Grandmother closed the door and tiptoed out to forever chores. Ah, but that I could have been patient then and listened. For today the morning hours are thin.

(in memory of Bonnie Jean Dixon Hunt, born this day/no longer with us)

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