The mourning dove
wearing noon’s aureole
coos from the rhododendron,
oo-waoh, shadow o-
ver what to do. Oh.
And the sad rhetoric spreads
through suburb and wood.
Those who hear
dove moan love no
querulous warbling more—
the going hence
about which is there no-
thing to do?
From no small rip in fate
the you you never shall be
more will be extracted.
Dove knows the rubric
and starts in, who,
who is next and soon?
Source: Poetry (February 2012).
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This poem originally appeared in the February 2012 issue of Poetry magazine
Carol Frost was born in 1948 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She studied at the Sorbonne and earned degrees from the State University of Oneonta and Syracuse University. The author of numerous collections of poetry, including Honeycomb: Poems (2010), The Queen’s Desertion (2006), I Will Say Beauty (2003), Love and Scorn: New and Selected Poems (2000), and the chapbook The Salt Lesson (1976), she has received grants from the National . . .
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