where are you?

by Daphne Marlatt

     Note: These poems are from a series called “flights” written
     about not only my childhood in Penang (& the feeling of
     being both here in Vancouver, & there) but also my dad’s
     early years there in the 30s based on letters he wrote home to
     his mother in England.

almost downtown, certainly eastside in early morning’s transparent light
from the tip of a fir, above rooftop streetside murmur repeat mourning
or calling, collared and intimate. coo and bill, coo. COOO the where–
ARE–you dove.

in a stand of trees at the foot of a Wisconsin field with baby son in
my arms, listen, listen, the owls are calling, the only bird of poetry
Duncan said. for v–ow’l breath sings through open sounds or spirit
holes in the small chitter of everyday field creature gossip.

so I said to Cid visiting with Shizumi, come hear the owls as we walked
to that stand of trees. Cid never said or didn’t know (so urban we were)
those are wood doves calling, owls don’t flock. we talked about Lorine
who wasn’t well, they were on their way to see her on Blackhawk
Island, this poet who knew birds and water, flocks of, flecks of light.         

so how had I forgotten the doves? Malaysia’s spotted one, singing its name
terkukur from the durian tree, one in a drench of song we would wake to
liquid notes around the open verandah then . . .

but now is now, a raptor sound these collared doves emit, ghost pterosaur
staking its territory diminished scale, hissy fit, and predatory. for our time.