The Language of the Doves
I use to wonder what it’d be like to talk to the animals…those on the ground and those that soar so high above…to speak the language of the dolphins, the eagles the elephants and the doves…
I was in our backyard when I noticed a palm frond that had fallen still clinging to a tree..so I gave it a little tug with the hope of setting it free.
The frond stayed attached to the palm tree (as you might have guessed)
but my tugging on the tree dislodged a dove family from their nest.
I hadn’t noticed the doves tucked securely in the palm tree’s trunk
and when I heard the nest hit the ground…my heart immediately sunk.
The mother dove flew to our fence…the first spot she could find…
and immediately started yelling at me…giving me a piece of her angry dove mind.
I was apologizing profusely between her loud and angry tweets when I noticed her two babies on the ground beneath my feet.
One hopped once…then twice…then flapped her wings and breaking the suspense…
quickly flew right over and joined her mother on the fence.
Her other baby tried his best but could only hop around…he was not yet ready to fly and was stuck upon the ground.
After watching her baby hop to a safe place and hide…I turned to the mother and paused….once again as she yelled at me I apologized for the damage I had caused.
I left the two doves on the fence and the one hidden in the lawn and when I returned a little while later all three doves were gone.
I wasn’t sure what happened…what was my mistake’s final consequence
until a few days later when I saw three doves sitting on my fence.
Had they returned to show me they survived…how the little one had finally flown…
Or had the mother brought her babies back to show them the man who destroyed their home.
By the mother’s tone I think it was the latter…
and again I apologized as I watched her family take off and soar into the sky above….
glad that despite my blunder they survived
and glad, at least in this instance,
I never learned
to speak the language of the doves.
Copyright © Jim Yerman | Year Posted 2022
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