Dovecote

A pigeon house

Made from white plaster 

Is the place I live

With my children

It has been built around us

Because we are pigeons

The children

Are grown now

Except for the baby

Who lives in my pocket

Sucking on an apple core

And wearing one white deer moccasin

Once our people

Rode camels

I assume

And also they wore quilts 

But now we are wearing the husks 

Of corn 

And decorated with gold filing dust

We wear heavy amulets

Because we need to protect

Ourselves from a machine

Which is trying to eat us

So we have been walled in--

Sometimes I feel like a child hiding in a cupboard

Built into the corner of a colonial barn

But mostly I feel like a dried pea in a glass jar

In the pocket of my mothers apron

Under water,  my hair has been ironed straight

the war is over

If you want it

Her bones break through the cast

And off she goes into the sky

My daughter is a bird

Her enormous wings swoop past the factory smog

Over a place like Montana

And into a cave 

Big enough for a herd of goats 

She nests till she nests till she nests till its time again