Day 10 - Mirror Poem - The Mourning Dove

NaPoWriMo Prompt: Today’s prompt (technically yesterday's prompt now) is a mirror poem. For a mirror poem, one is supposed to find or think of a poem he or she admires, and write a poem that is a “mirror-image” of it. He or she can make this mirroring quite general, or very specific. In this case, the poem should be very obvious - don't know if it's exactly a mirror or not, but I think I came pretty close.

The Mourning Dove

Once upon a springtide cheery, while I daydreamed, warm and bleary,
Over the few blossoms blooming around my porch and door -
While I wakened, lashes batting, suddenly I heard wings a’flapping,
As of some one harshly slapping, slapping bugs upon the floor.
“What a noise,” I cried aloud, “Flailing about upon the floor –
                How pitiful! But there’s something more.”

Ah, so faintly I recall I’d heard the same sound just last fall;
And the many crowding leaves flashed their glamour on the shore.
Patiently I spent my days – wandering in the autumn haze
From the frozen, icy gaze – the gaze I longed to feel no more –
For the common and dark season that the fairies abhor –
                  Even then twas something more.

And the crumpled, sweetened grass such to make the moments pass
Cradled me – cushioned me with such gentleness I’d felt before;
So then slowly, so to see what noise it was awakened me, I sat up quietly
Looking round the meadow, lest I hear the sound once more  –
Round the meadow, hoping to hear the sound once more;
                    Through each flower and weed and floating spore.

Some time passed and nothing stirred; I forgot what I had heard,
“Bee,” I said, “or whatnot, ever, do not bug me anymore;
For I thought that I was waking to something more inspired, breathtaking,
When you startled me from making daydreams, hopeless to ignore,
That I hoped that you were otherwise” – and here I lay down once more.
                   Annoyed, I heard flapping as before.

Up into the sky so blue, I gazed at clouds that formed anew;
Seeing shapes, pretending to be troubled by that noise no more.
And the silence, golden, returned; with patience I knew I had earned
Another springtime nap like the one I was enjoying before
The lazy, peaceful, nap that I had taken in the grass before
                 But, alas, it flapped some more.

Up I sat and searched the ground for the animal stirring ‘round
I peered closer toward the sound, hoping to find the thing once more
“So loud,” I said, “So loud. But where is it you’re hiding now?
 Why must I walk all around to hear that sound I heard before?
To hear that great annoying sound that you were making before?
                 Why aren’t you flapping anymore?”

Then I closed on its location, and, so much to my elation,
There lay in the grass a peaceful Dove and suddenly my heart grew sore.
In its eyes, the innocence of youth; in its glance, a whisper of truth,
As if to say it had not meant to make the clamor it answered for
That it had not meant to become something I would abhor
                So I sighed and sat down once more.

This ivory bird had assailed my ears! But suddenly I felt warm tears
Welling in my eyes where they had gathered once before.
I used to see birds sit like this, when once I felt grandmother’s kiss,
When she walked the flowered garden paths she once created and adored
The garden paths flowing with roses and daffodils the spring restored
               And my thoughts turned to her once more.

Perhaps this was her spirit returning, feeling my soul always yearning,
For the gentle, loving care she fostered in my very core.
Then I looked again upon the Dove, remembering my grandmother’s love,
And the humorous, cheerful nature which she often showed before.
The fanciful, clever nature that my memory proved she always bore.
              I wept because here she was once more.

So the Dove then, sweetly cooing, as if it knew what it was doing,
Bobbed its head as in a nod and opened its graceful wings once more;
And with a sudden, mourning cry, took to flight and touched the sky.
It left me watching, watching ever, until my very eyes grew sore;
Until my weepy eyes mirrored the heart that had been so sore.
                But I knew I’d see the Dove again – now and again; Forever more.