Mourning Dove Messenger

The following is an amazing photo from the internet. (Unfortunately, the photographer is unknown.) Following the photo is a poem I wrote yesterday.

As I state in the poem, I found my close encounter with a mourning dove in our garden to be a positive experience, a soothing balm, comforting and reassuring on the eve of my second cancer surgery.

A rose blushed ghost with a luminous glow,

Suddenly, as if by magic, there she is:

Gently cooing at my feet.

Serene, confident, trusting in something bigger than herself,

She looks up at me with a keen but soothing stare

That releases me like deep meditation.

According to legend, such an encounter signals a death.

But what I see is such gentle grace and divine beauty

That I am comforted and reassured, not afeared,

By my Mourning Dove messenger.