Another clear, cold morning. Two mourning doves call back and forth, occasionally overlapping, as the sunlight inches down toward their perches.
mourning doves
3/17/2024
Patches of blue. The mourning dove’s incessant cooing finally comes to an end, leaving the daffodils’ ensemble of horns to their silence.
2/9/2024
A mottled sky half an hour past sunrise. It’s quiet. The dove who was calling at first light, as if it were March already, must’ve gone back to sleep.
2/8/2024
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful.
2/2/2024
It’s the last overcast dawn for days, they say, so I try to find something to savor in the cold gloom, among the rumbles of distant machines and the one-note whistles of dove wings.
1/6/2024
Heavy gray clouds, and a breeze from the east: storm coming. Something flushes all the doves from the spring—a euphony of bright notes.
1/2/2024
An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the wall: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings.
4/16/2023
Sun glimmering through fog as wild turkeys whine and gobble, mourning doves moan, and a red-winged blackbird sings in the marsh.
3/21/2023
A cloud-free morning, the sun through the trees just bright enough to fool my body into feeling warm. A mourning dove’s song sounds reassuring: There. There. There.
2/12/2023
Twenty minutes till sunrise, the half moon’s fuzzy ear. A mourning dove starts to call, taking a few tries to get the right notes.
1/21/2023
Gray sky, and the ground scrofulous with snow—an eighth of an inch. A sudden cacophony of mourning dove wings.
12/5/2022
Cold and still. Dove wings accompany a train whistle. A red sunrise creeps down the western ridge.
11/23/2022
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up on sonorous wings.
8/5/2022
Rain and fog. A wood thrush sings three times and falls silent. A mourning dove goes on and on.