The few remaining leaves
stagger drunkenly, randomly
across the darkening sky.
The wind blows them
where it will, begins to moan
the loss of autumnal color,
mourn the coming darkness.
Christ comes in darkness,
ambiguous gift to a virgin mother.
Not for the likes of them
guiding stars, comfortable welcome,
only alien status in unknown Egypt
the result of an old man’s dream
and then a promised piercing.
Emanuel de Witte, 1660
After four months, the doves’ echolalic
cooing was already a phenom
we anticipated at dusk, unless a soughing rain
found our bougainvillea-rimmed balcony.
Spotted doves they were, with banded necks
black-and-white. The three-part cooing
led us, falsely, to surmise these long-tails
were a collectivity, a pitying, a cote.
A 12 foot square of crime scene tape
stretches below my seventh floor window,
where the tree trimmer plunged
to his death, after the oak branch,
carrying the squirrel nest
I’ve been admiring all fall—
a nursery confection built
of twigs and leaves, lined with moss
and feathers for warmth, meant to ride
the winds. The trimmer’s father saw
his son die. That’s the way it may have felt
for the nest makers. I should not equate
both griefs, but I am not God,
only a human, a pattern maker