Doves in the Lot
 

I'm not satisfied with the ending.

Doves in the Lot

The grackles in the grocery’s parking lot,
Slightly unkempt, the ambling purplish males
And duller females with their dragging tails
And feathers half askew, boldly will not
Yield way to cars or shoppers pushing carts.
What are they waiting for? A spill of beans
Or rice to home in on like sable darts?
They seem to thrive beyond their slender means.

Today a brace of northbound mourning doves
Kept to the fringes, waiting for largesse
Of some small sort not spied by their large cousins.
Mated for life, who knows what moves their loves?

In Oahu once, I saw them clustered, dozens--
Tiny, cooing, sustained by less than less.

Hi, Sam—

Around line 5, I received a clear image of some homeless people who congregate at the entrance to the parking lot of one of our larger strip malls in Anchorage. Always bedraggled, inadequately dressed for the challenging weather, pushing as far forward as they can without impeding the flow of cars in order to request alms, trying to keep their spirits up. At any time of the year there are always at least a half dozen of them. How they subsist is a mystery. Anchorage has 286,000 people, 1,700 of whom are currently experiencing homelessness. I wondered if you could connect the birds to these people, if you wanted a suggestion for the ending of your sonnet.

Glenn

Thanks for reading, Glenn. I don't want to push this too far. The doves are a rarity in places like this but dominant in Hawaii. Grackles just come with our territory. They're fearless.

Hello, Sam,

This works very well—carefully observed and sensitively rendered. I like how you develop the contrast between the brazen grackles and the quiet mourning doves. The sonnet is understated and yet textured with implication and tonal shifts. That said, a few areas might benefit from refinement.

1. Meter and line rhythm:
   The opening line, “Slightly unkempt, the purplish males” is a foot short of iambic pentameter. One smooth fix might be:

   “Slightly unkempt in looks, the purplish males”

   This fills out the meter naturally by adding this specific detail.
        
2. Varied phrasing:
   I wonder if the consecutive 'And' initiated lines could be varied and possibly strengthened--for instance,

   Slightly unkempt in looks, from purplish males
   To duller females with their dragging tails
   And feathers ...

        
3. Title consideration:
   Your current title, “Doves in the Lot,” effectively picks up on the double meaning of “lot.” That said, something like:“The Lot with Doves” might hint more openly at both setting and symbolic significance, offering a slightly more lyrical or fable-like overtone.
        
4. The ending lines:
   You noted your own dissatisfaction with the ending, and I agree that the current:

   “Tiny, cooing, sustained by less than less.”

   while evocative, feels slightly abstract and could benefit from a more grounded or precise image.
   You might consider:

   - “Tiny, cooing, sustained by plucks or less” — maintaining the delicate economy of sustenance.
   - “Tiny, cooing what they cannot express” — bringing in emotional nuance and reinforcing the contrast between vocality and reticence.
   - “Tiny, cooing, sustained by bits of less” — poetic, spare, and thematically aligned with the spareness of the birds’ lives.

        
5. On “In Oahu once…”
   
   This line feels like a sudden geographic and temporal departure from the otherwise unified setting. It briefly disrupts the poem’s mood and local atmosphere. If you really want to include a setting, maybe provide an earlier hint for it—an epigraph might be enough. Else, you might consider replacing it with something more neutral and spatially consistent, such as:
   

   “At the fringes, I saw them clustered, dozens—”

   which preserves the motif of marginality and helps keep the setting cohesive.

All in all, you have a finely tuned piece with a lot going for it. I hope these suggestions are helpful as you continue refining.

Cheers,
…Alex

Thanks, Alex. I'm embarrassed by the missing foot! I'll amend it later.

I think I'll add a line space before the last two lines, signaling a slight second turn.

I don't want the easiness of allegory here. It is what I saw.

Hi, Sam!

I was puzzled by the emphasis on size. The sonnet calls the grackles "larger cousins" of the mourning doves, who are described as "Tiny," but aren't they more or less the same size?

From Wikipedia:

The common grackle entry in Wikipedia does mention that there are larger species of grackles, so maybe the ones in your neck of the woods are a larger species?

I would suggest keeping the focus on the fact that the narrator has sometimes seen larger groups of mourning doves, without mentioning where. The memory of Oahu might be strictly accurate reportage, but it highjacks my attention and flies it from the supermarket parking lot to Hawaii. I'm easily distracted and need to stay in the parking lot, if you want me to continue pondering ornithology instead of tropical paradises.

I'll voice a dissenting opinion. Oahu is quite the geographical leap, for sure, but I think it's meant to function that way and it certainly works thematically. At least how I’m reading this. The last line of the second stanza sets it up just fine, imo. I don’t think that you could pick a better location to fly the poem to, from the grocery store parking lot (which is perfect as well). If anything, it's a bit of a sentimental risk. But it works for me. At first, I mistakenly read “less and less” and I think I’d prefer that. I do like the close though. Nice work, Sam. FWIW.

Sam, the meter feels a bit off in L7. It could be read with just four beats: Or RICE to home IN on like SAble DARTS? Would you consider something like "hurtle toward" in place of "home in on"?

Susan

Thanks for the comments, all. I need to get rid of the doves/loves rhyme, which is too easy. The ubiquity of grackles in Texas parking lots seems to be a local phenomenon. The Hawaiian doves, which congregate in similar places, are about 1/2 the size of the ones we see here.

Enjambing not/yield, which would normally seem poor practice, works well here, stressing the notting that they're doing.

I don't have a suggestion for the ending. The current one, feeling a bit of a non-sequitor, is thought-provoking.

I like the ending, and the sudden jump to Oahu, but I agree that loves/doves feels rhyme driven.

Hilary, what's odd is that we might say a pair of quail but not a pair of dove for these monogamous birds. I'm trying to think of other species, other than deer, that get this odd singular treatment. I sat on my son's deck this afternoon and saw a few doves. I guess it's their spring migration time.

Incidentally, in Shakespeare's delightful song about spring, we see "turtles tread." I remember my high school teacher saying something about how that's exactly how turtles move. However, I later learned that "turtles" are in fact turtle doves and that "tread" has an older sexual meaning that goes back to Chaucer.

Well, there's (there are?) sheep.

Hello Gywnn,

On the construction of the doves/loves rhyme, the line ending with "love" stands out in how it is disconnected from what comes before and what comes after; in that it introduces a love motif which is abandoned as the poems carries on with the previous motif of the doves trying to subsist.

I suppose you try to get away with the line by treating it as a throwaway observation which does not necessarily have to connect with what is around it, and the rhyme is not that problematic to me, but I wonder if you can find something else which works better, even while still using the technique of a disconnected throwaway observation.

It is always fun to see what one can do with the old done many times rhyme pairs.

Yeah!

Maybe the grackles and doves need a sonnet apiece. I think I tried to pack too much into a single poem. The doves are outliers here, but in Hawaii they're just as numerous as grackles, favoring supermarket lots. I read that they aren't native to Hawaii. The multitudes I saw were about the size of sparrows. Zebra doves, I think. So I'll be back with a new version.