Return to Farm Blog Home Page
February 25, 2009
Stolen Anthem
Rousing from sleep in dawn of mid-winter gray
No usual mournful morning greeting
From the dove house.
Approach and where are the perfect
Slender birds whose low-throated songs
Soothe the night, and ballast waking?
Look closely and tiny feathers float
Above the ground, chaotic
Signs of futile struggle.
Not taken up in rapture,
But tortured in the night
Bloodied and abandoned.
Inside, tucked and nested
His partner sets unaware
Warming five pearl smooth eggs.
What thief would steal
Through some narrow crevice
To leave behind such devastation?
Cry indeed for stolen song,
The gentle soulful sounds
Of peace
And await the wakening of a new dawn:
Restored anthem, hatching soon
Beneath a downy breast.