The Mourning Field

When I became responsible

to handle a shotgun,

Papa would often take me
dove hunting.

To attract the doves

to the dove field,

as he called it,

he would scatter kernels of corn,

the decoy of death,
as I called it,

over a ground that

no longer felt the farmer's plow.

To reach the corn

the doves would have to pass

through a gauntlet of hunters

hiding in the dry irrigation ditches,

camouflaged by the myrtles,

that flanked the field.

In spite of the salvo of birdshot,

the mourning doves would come

in irreversible waves,

like the waves of the sea,

bound by its nature

to crash upon a shore somewhere.

Two kinds of farmers

once came to this tract of land.

One looked to the ground,

and the other looked to the air.

Both received a harvest.

Now that the land is developed,

there is no longer any trace

of furrows or fowl

to tell the tale

of what took place

in the mourning field.