The dove looking up toward Thirteenth Street
Oh lovely she was waiting at the front steps
And startled, flew up to perch on a spare
Oak, just ready to bloom. She had blue
In her tail feathers and they pointed back
At me as she often looked back herself
And she was my mother, of course, gone now
Over two years now, so happily, she lit off ot just
Under a porch across the road. She pecked
And preened. Swallows in the gutter, spade
In the mud, tulips pulled out of the Poston
Pavers from Attic, Indiana while no weeds
Insulted the Metropolitan Blocks from Canton
Ohio. She was clean amidst the bricks.
She pecked and preened out of eyeshot
But said goodbye from her view of the turrets
And corner windows of West Scott Street.

Scott Zieher was born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin. His poetry has recently appeared online at Eleven Bulls, Flaneur, Slurrymagazine, and Diagram. His essays on art have appeared in The Provincetown Arts Review, NYarts Magazine, ArtReview, and online at Emergency Almanac. In March, 2003, he and his partner, Andrea Smith, opened ZieherSmith Inc., a contemporary art gallery featuring artists in all media and located in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. He is currently at work on volume two of a projected thirteen volume poem entitled Virga.