Brown Dove

Brown Dove

He came every autumn
through winter with gentle calls
of remembering,
faint hope she would be there.
Arcs of wings brought down and up
would not bring his mate back
devoured last season by a taloned hawk
swooping from a gnarled
yet prodigious magnolia tree.

But he still showed and called to her,
every October
the lovely soft coo cooing,
filling my chest and ears,
the brown dove with a broken dream.