I want to raise white rock doves
like the couple I read about who breed them
for weddings and especially for funerals.
How the birds, released, can find their way back,
no one knows how. They avoid open bodies of water,
will fly a hundred miles around a bay
unless ambushed on take-off or on landing
by a falcon or a hawk. I could describe them
in a way that’s human, their vulnerability
at the beginnings and ends of flight,
their drive to return to where they started,
that faithfulness to home, the way
one rock dove, saved as a baby
from attack and briefly dried and warmed
inside the breeder’s sweatshirt, still knows
its human rescuer—spots her in the yard
and lands on her head or shoulder. I’d like
to walk around wearing a white rock dove,
its small life weighing lightly on my skull.
There would be poop and feathers in my hair,
bird-down linting my coffee and clothes, still
I want to find a simpler sort of meaning,
a bit of prettiness some stranger needs
on the best and worst of days, at weddings
and especially at funerals. To nurture
a metaphor that doesn’t require words.
So I love reading that people love most
those initial seconds when a dove seems
unsure, when it flaps and circles to find
its compass, then knows exactly where to go.