Night’s dark bell holds your sole caterwaul, lost

bobcat call before dawn rubs open her rheumy blue

lids or traffic snarl revs, guns rush hour

purposeless as random gunfire into a high school gym.

Quail you run for reals, stick legs almost ridiculous

alongside the pompous politico strut of white-winged doves,

you solo now

your mate incubates her unhatched brood

tucked with her soft cluck under teddy bear cholla

thorns away from coyote’s tender nose, screech

of his scimitar teeth.

My neighbor, a nurse from Obregon’s gone

silent as the waning gibbous moon,

her doe-eyed teen son and she sequestered

behind her rusty corrugated metal wall quiet now,\

her brother moved with his Bentley and gold neck chains, his cock crow

land deals, his midnight Fuck You Bitch, Puta screams

to his mate, Michelin tire spin of gravel

in neighbor faces.

Doubt he misses your sunrise plea, quail, or the way

sun rises twice over desert mountain stegosaurus spines

or his sister who glances often for ICE

over her shoulders in her blue Scooby-Doo scrubs

as she walks the hospital parking lot

to her paint-peeled Nissan sedan

after the ER night shift

tending the newly wounded, holding the hand

of a stranger’s last heart beats, after dumping

bed pans, adjusting pillows and IVs,

comforting, comforting, comforting

just as now you comfort me, quail,

walking, six topknot feathers trembling, beside

the braggadocio armada of white winged doves, before breaking

news rips through sky’s blue lace veil, before

the leader shakes his bleached blond crown,

lifts his stern red scowl, vows

he’s free to annex our neighbor north as his 51st state, puffs

Armani breast feathers, hops

atop the block with his crony white-winged doves,

to hog all the seed.