back to
poetry
index

Hot Seat of Judgment
by Earl Coleman

In my chimney nests a mourning dove. How do we
mess things up like that, flying from sweet marsh
grass to the frying pan? It isn’t that our bird-brain
can’t connect us to our customary tasks, or abdicates
responsibility for us. In thrall to Nature in its 9-5,
it guides us in quotidian affairs with customary ease.
It’s when we’re at decision-making time we wing it,
leaving brain behind, and lean like my poor bird,
on instinct to fend off ill wind, breaking beaks
on obdurate stone in cul de sacs, or homing in to
settle on a perch in some precarious free-fire zone.