When Doves Cry

A dove story.

I saw a dove pair hanging out today. A sweet dove couple. Aren’t they always sweet? Dove couples seem tighter than other bird pairs, don’t they? You see one, and sure enough, there’s the mate. Doves are into some kind of sweet togetherness.

One of my favorite bird stories tells the passion of two such doves. They were gray birds, and I think they were doves. Possibly catbirds, but I think doves. I’ve decided doves. I was sitting inside, near the patio doors, and noticed two gray birds on the wood floor of the deck, just barely on the other side of my door. My first reaction was something like alarm. Like whoah, like a little kid’s reaction catching parents in the act. Like, alarm! Like, what are they doing?

One gray bird was attacking another gray bird, like a mugging. It looked pretty brutal. I thought birds of the same species didn’t attack each other in such a personal way, so I thought. I’ve seen territorial battles, which generally involve dive-bombing and fly-by-pecking. But this was more like a serious, personal, life-threatening assault. One bird was physically attacking the other, something like attempted murder, right there on the floor of the deck, a few feet from me. I guess as I debated if it was my responsibility to break up this brutality, it occurred to me it wasn’t more than a bird’s version of carnal knowledge. Doves look to me to be reasonably gentle creatures, a bit slow, and almost a bit dumb, in their slowness. What was happening between these two birds, though, seemed unexpectedly rough, not a gentle coupling at all.

It didn’t last long. After a moment or two, as I watched, the assaulter righted himself, fluffed a bit, and flew off. Then she collected herself and did likewise. That’s when I concluded it was just sex between two seemingly consenting adult birds. Two adult birds doing what birds do, I guess. It was a rough and tumble session, then they each fluffed their feathers and flew off, and you almost expected one or the other to light a cigarette, hop onto the nearby rail, and look out into the night for a while. But no, despite the apparent nature of doves, togetherness and all that, right after the act, togetherness didn’t seem to be part of what was expected.

I guess the funniest part to me was my reaction…that I thought things were amiss in the animal kingdom when doves are attacking doves. Nah, those gentle seemingly in-love doves I saw tonight…they’ve probably done the same. Maybe that’s why they flew off, I’d like to think, for some privacy.

The dove story. The familiar coo, pairings and sexy instincts, a rough execution, the essential fluffing, and the realities. Who knew?

For real, birds and the bees, etc., but inspired by the one and only Prince, 1984…When Doves Cry.

Capture My Soul

If someone wanted to capture my soul, they’d play some good picking strums for me on an acoustic guitar. Actually, they’d lift my own old guitar out of the soft chair where it waits, and they’d tune it, and then they’d play some gentle picking strums, an intro to some old folksy song I’ve known for years and years. And I’d love it. It would capture my soul and take it to that place where we all need to go once in a while.

Isn’t It Ironic?

My brain keeps singing that Alanis Morissette song, the same line over and over, it’s like rai-ay-ain, on your wedding day.

There’s something cathartic about that song, and that line. It’s like rai-ay-ain, driving away at my brain. It’s like a rant or tantrum or something. For the four-year old in me.

Harvest Time

This part of fall makes you hear Neil Young in your head. Harvest Moon and all that.

For me, though, it’s ‘After the Gold Rush’. I was lying in a burnt out basement, etc. I’m not the biggest Neil Young fan in the world, but he’s got some great lines.

“I was lyin’ in a burned-out basement, with a full moon in my eyes. I was hopin’ for replacement when the sun burst through the sky.” Yeah, I get that image. I guess, when I think back, it was the basement with a full moon in my eyes. That’s the image. I get that image.

It’s, honestly, a little Laverne & Shirley and their basement apartment with the bars in the window. It’s some old movie I can’t possibly recall. But it’s clear in my mind, a burned out basement with the full moon in my eyes.

Havana

Ooh, na, na. So I have these habanero plants. And God bless them, they’ve been productive. I have an appreciation for plants I stick in the ground and fertilize and water, and they produce. Well, these guys have produced.  They’re attractive plants. Admirable. The peppers are red and ready for picking.

Unfortunately, I didn’t mean to plant all these hot peppers. When I picked them up at the garden center, the sign said ‘sweet banana pepper’.

There’s a part of me wants to pick one of these habanero peppers, wash it, clean out the seeds, cut it, and try in some way, shape, or form, to partake. ‘Cause I planted them, and they’ve performed. They deserve that much.

Ooh, na, na.

[Havana – Camila Cabello]

The Image

It’s maybe the iconic image connecting music with an era. Abbey Road in 1969 was the gold standard. Like, were you in the crosswalk, on that day, at that time? It was an exclusive group, and a high bar. Fast forward to 2022, and what remains of that exclusive group is Paul and Ringo, and then there’s all the rest of us.

She came in through the bathroom window. I always pictured a smallish window, four feet by four feet, and about five feet off the ground. Curtains? I don’t know if there were curtains. But I saw it as a swing-out casement window, opening to the back yard. How she fit in through my mind’s version of the bathroom window, I don’t know. Maybe it was a conjured vision of the bathroom window in our house when I was a kid. Or it could be something to do with the window Robert Redford used to get away in The Sting.

The thing about a great image, in a song or in written word, is that everyone gets to see it their own way. If you don’t get people to see their own personal version of that image in their head, then whatever it is you were trying to do, it’s not such a great image.

When you hear “the pump don’t work cause the vandals broke the handles”, do you see one of those old-fashioned water pumps you find sometimes, rarely, in the country? You’ve seen that pump. I’ve seen that pump. Bob Dylan knew his way around imagery.

The Abbey Road image is a Volkswagen Beetle parked on the sidewalk, and green leafy trees on a city street. Crosswalk stripes, jeans, bare feet, black, and white, the line down the middle of the street behind them. For me, the sound that accompanies the image is “Because” and “The Medley”. The joke of it is the image was almost accidental.

Photo: Abbey Road, Photographer: Iain Macmillan

Within Sight

The warm day you walk along an old path and the trees look like June, poison ivy is green and reaching out across the walkway, and birds are singing and moving with a seriousness that comes with the job they have to do, and it’s like we never had winter. Right? There’s no way to go but forward into warm summer evenings, dark skies, and a sweaty version of life you should only miss if you have to.

The Times

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born

Bob Dylan’s “Song to Woody”. The 1962 song was a tribute to Woody Guthrie, but, sad to say, sixty years later, the words are still relevant today.

Wingin It

Like the graceless angel,
a young eagle winging in the dark shadows
of a brand new day.
Slow strong wing beats.
Talons lifting,
slipping,
gripping a pine branch high above its landscape.
Instincts, stamina,
and a body language the fledgling doesn’t own yet.
A spirit borne of its magnificent ancestry.

Photo courtesy of Lady Hawk.

Ringo

It’s sumptuous, burnished, flashy, yes. But not garish. A lot like you’d find on a dogwood this time of year. Color variations and velvety textures, and iridescent trimmings, like glistening droplets left over from last night’s rain.

There’s something infectious. No, more like uplifting, but not quite. There’s something relaxing about the guy or gal who looks totally comfortable in their own skin. It makes you feel like everything’s okay. As it should be. Even when he’s at the microphone, his hands are drumming. He’s a bit of a flashy personality. All the rings, you know. That’s why they call him Ringo.

Image from imbd.com.
Ringo at the Concert for George