A father is best described by a lion, the view from his cage by an available bird, in this case,
an ordinary pigeon described by a stone. Minus bars, the blue sky.
Blue sky, she says, is clouded with regret still stippled with artillery of autumn leaves.
Autumn leaves an artillery. The staring crowd wears hats in the shape of pagodas, she says,
their feet shod in straw. Sometimes their eyes are angled.
One tree, says she, is beyond the concrete and has a branch of grafted blossoms, the rest
of it is dead. The intention of the tree, she says, is best described by a bowl of rice in the
hands of a monk in maroon and saffron robes bowing to a lily described by the peal of bells
at St. Catherine’s.
An hour before dusk is best described by a cardboard house in the rain.
The pigeon, hearing the lily, tells the lion not to roar not to roar not to roar.
But the lion comes undone, opens his wide wet mouth. And the people, best described by a
flock of pigeons, scatter and coo because they are doves, because what happened before can
best be described by them.