The Dove Who Came Inside

The Dove Who Came Inside

A mourning dove walked inside my apartment today,
Following a trail of sunflower seeds the finches left,
Who sit high on their feeder and eat with tossing heads,
Scattering seeds onto the deck below them, seeds left
For them themselves to eat, but the doves come too,
Walking with pigeons' grace and stabbing beak,
Amongst the hopping little bits of red and streaky brown
Seeming like dowagers or diplomats, larger but somehow
    weak.

At any rate, one walked inside this afternoon.
Realizing her mistake -- perhaps the warm on a cool day,
Perhaps the lack of breeze, or the carpet underfoot --
She turned to flee, and lost her bearings and the way.
She beat herself against the glass with flailing wings,
Throwing her broad buff breast into the sudden crystal air
Through which, she must have thought, she had just walked,
Threw herself again and yet again in panic to be out of there.
I heard those muffled thuds: the cat did, too,
Leaping from my lap to grab the dove with both her paws.
I was a step behind, and grabbed the cat, who sullenly let go
The lawful prize -- it's in the house, it's mine -- and from her
    jaws
Released one miau of protest, then hung limp and waiting.
The dove still beat herself against the glass, still tried
To force her way back whence she had come, still hoped
Her beating wings would this time carry her outside.

They say that birds can kill themselves that way.
I couldn't drive her, she only beat against the glass.
I took her in my hand--such still yet frantic eyes,
Such little weight for size, such tiny heart to beat so fast.
A finch the cat had brought inside once, who'd fled,
Leaving behind his tail, beneath the couch to hide
'Till I got home, had bitten me when I picked him up
Hard enough for blood to still be welling as he flew outside.
The dove's long beak, though, didn't move, nor she.
She was now panic frozen, was as still as death,
Except that beating heart, so fast against my fingers,
Except that frantic, panting breath.
Limp cat under one arm, still bird in one hand,
I walked back to the opened door, reached through my hand,
    then
Opened it as well: a little, little push against my hand,
Wings opening like a tiny thunderclap, and she was gone again.

I know this dove: she and her mate come daily,
Dignified among the finches, to sit like grownups at their meat.
She's back again, sitting on the railing by the flower box
Watching him and waiting for her turn to eat--
They do swap off. Any minute now he'll heave himself
Up off the feeder onto the rail, awkward yet assured,
And she will plop herself down into the sunflower seeds
And eat, while he watches and murmurs his co-ah coo coor.
Ah, now they've swapped off, she's eating now
With bobbing head, while he sits by the purple flower.
Her time inside, the cat, the glass, the fear,
It hasn't kept her gone beyond her time by even an hour.

I don't know if birds think, or what, or even how.
They must have memory at least, or how'd they know
To come back that first time for the sunflower seeds,
Before it was habit? She must remember something; even so
The dove who came inside has not stayed away.
Is it courage or stupidity that keeps her on her track?
Or is it simple hunger? She's walking on the balcony again,
Eating the seeds the finches scatter, looking ahead, not back...

(I wrote this a number of years ago; that cat died of old age six years past, and the downstairs neighbors' complaints caused the feeder to be taken down. But doves and finches are still all over the neighborhood.)