It's Still Life

Ten Doves on Her Roof

She says she wants them gone. Ten white doves on her roof. They’ve nested below the solar panels, there where warmth is a gathered renewable. There where two doves are now ten. There where white feathers fall lazy as February snow. There where fledglings pace the roof, grasp at courage to trust their wings. I watched one stride the ridge all day, back and forth. To and fro. Small and fragile. White, so white. It stood, frozen on the spot until its mother nudged it to the edge. It walked. It walked. And then it fell. Its mother watching from the roof. She stared down for hours. Expected it to move. Hoping. Every mother places a burden of hope on their child. But it didn’t move. Every mother knows despair, too.

Summer left us, chilled
Birds hammering through winter
Some never return

for dVerse Haibun #22. Extraordinary Days