Click here to listen to Doreen Gildroy read this poem. When the child wouldn't come into existence what was I to do? I knew it in a different way, then.

He said he had never heard
these stories
before we began, didn't care—
but now in his grief
they seemed everywhere.

         *

I was missing you,
and then the dove.

Singly—not in a pair—
in his usual place.

I watched him
on the garden wall,
thought the absence
of the other.

Whatever the reason,
I took it to
remind me of myself
and what I was missing.

It flew up
in the face of
all my instinct,
my raw animal comfort.

        *

His was a tender embrace.