It was nothing he could have imagined. A day’s drive
to a small rented house by the ocean, charmed by timbers and dark 

stone, a murmuring stream. He knew little of healing except
what comforted him on his morning strolls: the wooded paths,

cooing of doves across the field, their lifting and falling breasts,
the hush as far as he could hear, 
                                 so many silent spaces
like hot churches and schools in summer. He came upon 

a farmer’s market, trucks of ruddy produce and bales of hay,
rising before him like piles of ash as another time 
                                 intruded, its unutterable
ashes, barbed wires, and secret laboratories, their certainties 

and unknowns twisting in him, like the hem
of his wife’s dress torn, left shapeless in the shadows, 

where some pure human truths had been violated.
All of it flooding through him—the ancient rubble, 
                                 ravaging wreckage, his fears untethered,
swooping down furiously like the gull overhead.

A dove is caught in clenched pincers, hauled up and flung,
ripped open, splayed on the path. 
                                 Are you all right? He calls 
to his wife in the mist, to the dead who endure in the stillness,
like a shuddering cry, within.