Sitting below its burgeoning shade
I feel only crushed
Suffocated
New and still transparent
the cover appeared with the equinox
This hackberry laden with doves
is heavy over me
for its not the canopy
I needed
…is not the canopy I nurtured
and bled to sit below, every day
That shelter…that relief
from the burning sun and the lonely world
died with the final First Quarter moon of winter
Overnight
As quick as a sapling
collapsing into dust
Weakly folding
into deep time

While doves the color of desert
mourn all around me