La Paloma de Mi Vida Desierta

So she went and found a bird.

Moreover, it found her.

Lying partially flattened,

a broken wing fastened

blood-stuck

to the road.

Great, just great, just great.

Kids are in the back of the car,

sweaty, tired.

It is always hot here,

even in

winter,

and we all 

stick to our seats,

as we stick to our plans,

shiny petal pink noses

and fine soil-powdered

feet and hands.

Cupped hands, cups,
glasses

bowls

baths

fountains

pools,

we all live magnetized to water,

practicing water-divination,

succumbing to 

water-seeking behavior,

the perpetually parched.

Scattered throughout

this paved and

grid-locked city

stands Our Lady,

beatified in bathtub shrines,

and Our Savior’s cross

bedecked with garlands

of acetate roses

to mark the spots

where the dearly departed have

left the earth,

now quenched in mercy.

But this day, the beaten path

of school-uniformed pilgrims

taxied between 

bus stop and home

toward water 

in all

of its dispensations

is disrupted

and halted

by this

half-doomed

wave of a wing,

blowing up

from gusts of wind,

and not of its

own
will.

So now, a pregnant moment of sighs,

inside the metallic sand Honda,

steering, gear-shifting, braking,

hands and feet 

acting apart from mind,

but from a part of

the call of the road 

to halt

for this tiny toll,

and the heat 

shimmers

over the hood.

Pull over, get out, assess.

A goner. 

A dumb mourning dove

done got itself hit

and now just here lies,

peeking up at 
her peering down,

she bent over
hands on knees,

the glare

on her back,

It in her shade.

Well, this can’t be right.

This is out of order.
Highly irregular.

Dove should be above,

Woman should be below.

To realign this upset is

over the line

of requirements 
for the maternally inclined

as they circumscribe

their days

around this valley

of sacred heart mysteries

that never fail

to remind

how one false move 

and show’s over, bud.

She doesn’t have long

to stand exposed,

scalp prickling,

assaying viability

in this dry riverbed,

the engine running.

Lord, what to do?

What to do? What to do?

She pops the trunk

and hopes, then sees 

an old towel waiting for

emergency—

but one such
not imagined

as This: 

an aviation crisis
in a city where
Howard Hughes gathered
his airplane graveyard
with upward tails
on a plain
that glitter like sails
moored in a dry marina
and F-16s fly over
in trained quad
formation,
criss-crossing
trails
that spread
like cotton wool
and settle upon them,
alighting on shoulders
as a chemical
benediction
of the well-pleased
from the wide silver-blue.
Sparking, perhaps, 
an impulse of mercy
toward this
espied and singular sparrow

from those of us below,

arising

from a thinly veiled and 
disgusted faith 

in the ever unalloyed 

igneous truth 

of the tender young
family:

It’s Always

Something.

She covers the dove

in this

faded-as-the-desert-sky-blue

raggedy-edged, 

fringy towel-for-a-shroud

and heaves and sighs

in exasperation,

looking away to the sidewalk

and away from It,

aware of the faces in the car

straining to see

What is Mom Doing?

There is conditionally cooled

and welcome home to get to 

and popsicles

and cartoons

but we are strapped in,

red-cheeked, sweat-streaked,

our little beaks open.

This won’t take long,

can’t take long,

her chickadees

are sweltering.

In one sudden final swoop 

she heroics,

angelics,

and magics

this quivering,

wrapped and enraptured

delicacy of prey

up and off

the blinding

black asphalt

all cushiony tar 

binding gleaming white stones 

frosted with thick florescent

yellow striping,

her backside

now babooned up

before any upcoming

traffic,

yet covered up modestly, 
sensibly, practically, in
reasonably priced and

serviceable khaki 

skirting above

inevitably 
burned then 
tanned legs 

straddling

the fallen,

shod in sweating 
suede sandals

slippery and pigeon-toed

so that polished nails

are in situ
on either side

of this breath-pulsing
not  yet toe-tagged
lump of

blanketed Bird.

If it all comes down to

ten coral-red drops 

on the ends of her feet

spread but fixed 
onto this street,

beneath the Cross,

beneath the roaring eye

of Jupiter,

where is God Not?

If not Nowhere,

Then why not Here

just a moment ago

in this forsaken

suburban canyon

of stucco and tile and gravel,

Swiss-dotted 

with lizard 

footprints

up the concrete walls,

why not Here,

where All is Now,

just long enough

to Deus-Ex this

feather-mashed,

pinion-snapped,

helplessness

under an

all-seeing

sun that never relents,

not one moment of

concealment

does it provide,

no, not even in death

on a steam-rolled

strip of smooth

cruising on any afternoon,

carefully surveyed

over layer upon layer

of broken caliche,
sprayed

from enormous mustard

cylindrical tanks of water

standing up

on T-Rex legs,

dangling

slack hoses waiting to swell out

at each dawn’s

early light

with the shooting,

the blast.

She has witnessed this daily

soaking, grading, bull-dozing, baptizing

and stratifying of 

sifted sediment

in real time,

for a plasticine era.

No dignity in

this age

of the instant potato,

the sudden neighborhood,

the divided and conquered

and sub-divided

plots of nowhereland

of which she was gladly,

gratefully, 

breathe deeply in relief, yes, 

oh yes, she was the proud

owner of one,

by all that is profane,

because, funny, it turned out 
that there also was not dignity

in the quarrel of the

far off fixer-upper,

the spackle, paint-spattered

troweled off, wallpapered

marriage.

So now they are respectable

but not entirely decent

in these isles of homes
which aren’t

cut cookies at all

but chickenwire, styrofoam,

snap-together

press-on, bake-oven

glitter-sprinkled

hunkered down

anthills 
veined with 

termite tunnels

laid out

for all of them

raising these children,

these children,

so many children,

hair gleaming

baby teeth baring

knees scraping

in all of this maze

of too many

and never enough

children

sequestered

in mobile trailer

add-on schoolrooms

because

stuff and nonsense

the government dares

to want property taxes

to pay for these 

mini-educations,

and the elders would rather

save for their rainy days

which are numbered

in the teens

in this Old Pueblo,

and mutter disappointment

as a eulogy over

“these kids”,

appalled

at their own non-legacy,

a gathered-in nest

kept pristine for themselves,

a crying shame of comfort

in these

four bedroom houses

built for two

and free doctoral care,

and gambling and voting 

against these offspring,

as the coil shuffles off,

offering less and still less as their

to-whiches they have become accustomed

become evermore custom,

while we all expect more and still more,

of the younguns, 

to keep up with the Russians,

the Chinese, the Indians, with

jokes of “feathers or dots?”

and build up and around

retiring communes,

rather than commons,

in which, one day 

she will as well,

and again,

gladly, gratefully, merge into 

and become one with,

expiring relief that so much

more is behind than ahead,

so much that should have

been uprighted,

yet is still

left hanging in effigy

or shot down

like a starfish

drying out upon 

parking lot pavement

but first,

she and this

last days, endtimes,

not-long-for

this-world Dove

together, now,

alone in all the golden

stillness,

everything silent

in the geologic age

of a seafloor turned to

low tide desert.

She throws out the towel,

in the towel,

down the towel, 

swaddles bird murder,

someone else’s 

hit and run, 
until she can’t

see It through her

sunglasses and hair,

cascades It away,

as far as hands

can be, farther

than arms’s length

if that were possible,

so as not to

feel the final beating,

the trilling, the squeamish

brokenness of this

aviarian mammalian

reptilian hollow-boned 
grim-reaped other
that is not her

in the wholeness

of her arms that still work,

still bend, straighten and hold,
but never could fly
oh, why, oh why

and then swift up the eroded

embankment,

to the shored up strip

of vegetation

so highly prized

when it was once just

deemed scrub not fit

for man nor beast

nor any living thing creeping

upon the ground

but now is lined

with view-fencing,

for empty pools

and clanking

Sunbrellas,

an iron-railed

churchyard

for these

fossils and bones

that lie down, betrayed,

because the water no longer

runs through it, in these

choked up wish-washes.

She finds a half-circle

of shade beneath

a straggling Texas sage,
of questionable wisdom

to inter this 

still-living bird,

on this errand

of the mercilessly

bewildered

and shocked.

Yet how many times

can we come to a standstill,

a-mazed before death,

’til it simply

sits down beside us

and takes us by the hand,

not to reap

but to release

and to give

and to restore

to the divine

or at least

to provide

the natural

order

Because, Once upon

a nobler time,

a friend,

an artist of prosperity

perspicacity

and fenced-in property

featuring an O’Keefian

skull of a cow

nailed to his wooden

entrance gate

along with other signs

of authentic desert dwelling,

in tune and beknighted with

naturalist leanings,

discovered an owl

graciously already passed on

under his lone swaying cottonwood tree.

Of course such a find becomes

sacred duty to not

leave a horned,

grand and wise

mythological One

to moulder in anything

less than a grave

spaded deeply beneath

the shimmering

majesty of circular leaves,

each one a wafer

of communion

with the light above

and the sweet cool

below

a proper burial

fit for a king.

But here lies her poor common dove,

whom no one will mourn,

with no Godseye upon it,

under its pauper’s bower

of dusty and dried out quivering stems

which makes a lame story

for no one to hear,

so the Three:

a Madonna

and what Children are these?

are freed from the dying
to drive along
the living and quick distance home,
re-placed,
re-enhoused,

but only for a brevity

and the breviary

of tasks and chores

and Hail Housewares
in the Cult of Domesticity

before the suspense

coils round, overtakes her,

a hidden snake, poised,

striking the sternum.

She checks to see the littles

are sprawled on the couches

and white carpetburn,

now fed, now watered,

now cooled off, scrubbed up,

rubbed down,

drifting 

into dazes

and trances

in the lull before

dinner, 
the sweet children’s hour

when the ants

come marching home,

stunned, from the

city.

Errant again,

she glides the Accord,

their armored vehicle of

the nuclear family

back to the spot

of cease and desist

and clambers

back up to the Sage,

to find the denouement,

the resolution, the final act

of this mystery:

Has the misery 

at last been put out?

Will the coyote, the housecat,

the buzzard, the packrat,

have stolen inside

this terrycloth bundle

to find its task already

a fated fait accompli

but still warm enough,

Ooo, yes, a quick bite,

a cocktailed 
amuse bouche

before sunset?

Undisturbed,

just as she left it,

all is unmoving—

but Que Pasa?

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Not immoveable

at all, after all,

for she squats

and grasps only

the corner with

a shudder 

a grimace

an intake of air,

bated,

and tugs,

not as a magician

standing at table,

but gentle as the touch

of a hand in a nightmare,

and the questing fingers

are answered back

with a flurry of feathers

under the chin

a flutter skyward

commonplace to none,

the empty linen

left below,

an ascending life-whirl 

that does indeed

set her back on her heels,

nearly a bottoming out

caught by bracing palms,

and a laugh in her throat

as the Sun, now sunk in the sky 

to chest level,

calls this tiny flighted one

high 

into its 

red solar winds.

Her lips crack

as her mouth

of little faith

spreads open

over a plain of white teeth

smiling upward,

eyes squinting

sightless

daring not to look upon

the holy of foolish holies

within the eternal

glory

of getting played

by God.

"White Dove of the Desert, in Pink," (of  the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, AZ), oil on linen-lined board, 12"h x 16"w
copyright Jill Banks 2012, jillbanks.blogspot.com

© Copyright 2016 by Gilded Lily Press