What I'm listening to lately

The mourning dove

She sits on a high wire, lost in the trees, out of sight. I’ve heard her every morning of spring. She seems to be camped out, cooing, giving me a meditation on sunrise, sounding like a wooden pan flute chilling and trilling. It’s an affectionate howl, grounding flight through the air, through a cacophony of dizzying sound, be it the sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, or chirpies, who are boisterous and loud. I see them gregariously pecking and wrestling a squirrel up and down. The red maple, dogwood, piercing the clouds.

With their soprano and tenor as flashy hero and lilting ingénue. Because, of course, they know they are performing for you. But if you listen closely, a breathier, huskier tone is coming through. Like a thread of thick wool woven through a sky of bright ribbon and string. She’s puffed up, feeling herself, a little slower, a little deeper, just giving to sing.

She offers up permission to be something else. Perhaps just yourself. Operating on a bass-ier tone, unfazed by the musical theater, knowing to fill out and fill in what’s been missing in the ether. Unhurried, she’s making a home in herself, in her own style, her own way, every morning, every day.

I have been listening for her, looking up above for a dusted teardrop with wings. But as the temperature rises, I hear less of her sing. Yet still I look and listen for the low tones of love, of nature’s crooning artist, the mourning dove.