Winter cold has struck my bones

And in my bed alone I sleep

Pondering upon a dream

Where brooding darkness creeps.

Then I wake upon a coo

an honest sadness in its call

the morning sound of Mourning Doves 

Where hope could reign or fall.

I slump up to my windowsill

and listen to its song.

I search into its endless pain,

I pine to know what’s wrong.

Perhaps it mourns the moon’s quick death,

yet welcomes up the sun?

Duality of death and birth—

The womb and pall are one.

Shrugging off God’s questionnaire,

I hunger for a meal

and eagerly I rip apart

An orange’s slick peel.

Beneath its skin, tough yet smooth,

Its slices are revealed

Within this fruit I thought was one

Many did it yield.

The carcass of its crippled rind

Lays twisted in my plate

While dove outside sings longingly

A song of twisted fate:

“No thing of one is made of one,

It always comes from many,

In loudness there is deafness,

In nothing there is plenty.”

Mourning Doves and Oranges

Both creep from this same darkness.

Birth and death and one and all

In God’s hand sleep safe, caressed.

Yet to that God of questionnaires

No questions do I ask,

But long for his eternal sleep

For Him I have no task.

Belly full and ears delighted,

My morning shivered on

I mourned a life and lived a death,

While delirium had dawned.