Our neighborhood dove is back in the trees after a month or so -- sometimes it's months -- of missed presence and despairing wait. What a lovely thing when the remote encounter refreshes! No one knows where he's been, and how it is there -- and where his folks are. It's enough though that he's back!
Perhaps he's another, altogether, and not the one we're thinking he is. Perhaps a twin. Which doesn't rest the question. Perhaps he cries after a fashion for a lost love, or mother -- or motherland. Or brother. Perhaps it is his way of saying I'm here and waiting for someone to say hello and no one knows how.
No one knows where he goes when he's gone and not with us -- like a son who won't answer your tethering call and returns when he wants to. Does he tell anyone, amidst all the dangers -- and in particular in this age of Covid -- that he's with us?
You may hear him but not see, in the hiding foliage; and yet know in the mind, and in the mind's eye see exactly, who be singing. Who be gone. Who be late returning.
Low-key beats & subtle aural connections are in all the stretched toing air and froing; and are the reason his return so refreshes the ear and endears -- though he was not always here. He's a fine addition to who we are -- an edition that subtly reassures and enriches. Why we will never forget is because of his fond and wary affinity, whenever he be with us!
First Drafted: Early December 2020
