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Over the course of the past several weeks, in a nest nestled in the needles of a yew, little more than an arm’s length from our kitchen window glass, a pair of mourning doves produced a pair of baby birds who are now, I can see, only days away from heading out into the wider world.
I cannot distinguish the daddy from the mom, but one or the other of the parent doves, until just lately, was always on the nest, staring in at us at any hour of the day or night whenever Celeste or I was at the kitchen sink. We would return the creature’s patient stare, sometimes for many minutes at a stretch.
I have not asked what my wife thinks about while she performs her acts of ornithological observation, but I myself have felt judged by the bird’s steady, blue-lidded, blinky gaze. Does she have something she would like to say to me? I do not hear her coo. But does the dove have questions she would wish to ask, or wisdom she would care to share?
I wonder, or worry, does this fluffy-feathered prosecutor purport to have evidence of a long unpunished crime, such as assault with a Daisy BB gun, and is she, day by day by day, inviting penance from an ever less innocent boy?
♦
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