TO A FLIGHT OF FANCY /// Valerie Griggs

TO A FLIGHT OF FANCY

///Valerie Griggs

A solitary mourning dove sits on a telephone wire high above the midmorning din of roaring garbage trucks and insolent busses. Is she David’s sparrow, Hitchcock’s harbinger? I cannot leave her just a bird, when, from age to age, birds have perched as deities and archetypes in wood and stone and gold.

I imagine species by sound: a forlorn cry across an autmned lake, a coo, a hoot, a chirp, a screech— then the wily scavenger darts, the heroic predator dives; enchanted swimmers, colorful climbers to heaven and flightless woodland dwellers migrate across my mind’s eye.

As stationary and plump as Hopkins’s dauphin is glorious, this dove carries my fancy across miles of ocean on wings outstretched and still— until the shrill honking of the car behind me snares the reverie.

SMITTEN IN A CAT CAFE

/// Emily Coulter