CHAPTER FOR BEING TRANSFORMED INTO A DOVE

The rooftop groans
Beneath the grievance
Of your footsteps
Above the sleep
Of one thousand ears
Where, like Lorca,
You wrestle
With the moon’s
Sharpened cutlass
Feeling your life
For some beastly dream
Captured by the blinking lens
Of a dying city bird
Who, unearthly, labors
Beating its hopeless wing
Against the stitched seams
Of my heart–like us
Torn and aching, my Dove,
To be somewhere else.