why does the wood pigeon’s sound make so?

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i began to drink the solemn song of the universe around age five :
lying in bed, as dusk falls into night,

i’d hear a bird’s cry of blue quietude –
they live in the trees outside.

felix was the first to know the name : we were bathing in our young adulthood
on a blossoming west village street.

i mimicked the sound for him, and he, a flutist,
whistled it back in perfect harmony.

it’s a wood pigeon, he said.

i have never been much of a musician but i knew that bird song was the same.

the next time i tried to see felix, he claimed to have heat stroke –
and then i was out of the country.

for years i cursed this sound for hurting me so : for leaving me zippering and fragmented and mauled : for years i thought they haunted my bedroom alone.

some days,

the heart is like a raw child screaming –
i must stop to ask why it’s sad.

the events of the day? walking home alone? not finding the love you wished?

that’s what happens when you hope too hard :
the heart like an old dog sleeping.

some days,

i am flying downhill,
all effort removed.

like shaking dead blossoms off of my skin,
the ones placed so carefully –

as if to hide,
as if to hibernate.

but i’m no bear – no, i’m a white-feathered bird, and here is my soul :
emerging from despair, whispering in wonder,

so this is sweetness,
so this is light.

some days, on this earth,
i can do nothing but drop down in dappled leaves and cry.

for all that makes it worth to live, and sad to die :

words for the love i have longed for,
words for the birds that i have found.

~ painting is : 8000 metres down by william stein (2018) ~

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