The Mourning Dove

As I listen to Rachel Maddow anchor tonight’s coverage of protests following yet another violent racially-motivated murder of a person of color at the hands of law enforcement, I hear a different sound.

It is the coo of a mourning dove in the tree outside my open window. I think of George Floyd calling for his mother and for a brief moment I feel his fright and pain. For a brief moment I feel a fraction of how it must feel to be black in America. How it must have felt for generations, ever since the first ships came to steal people from their homes in African countries.

This spring ought to have been one of hope. This spring should have been a foretaste of the jubilant autumn to which we look eagerly forward. 2020 was to have been an important year in American history, one of change, of healing. I saw it as a lifting of the nationwide stress and anxiety that has plagued us since the end of 2016. Instead we have over 100,000 dead from the coronavirus, most of whom are not white.

In my frequent walks outdoors I see that nature is still doing its joyous thing just as it has done for as long as there has been life on this planet. Meanwhile, the world of the humans is convulsed with turmoil and disease. The contrast is sobering.

“Hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo,” says the mourning dove, as if to mark the loss of George Floyd, who was senselessly murdered because of the color of his skin. I am not comforted. My country is scored with the kind of pain that will not go away.

And we are leaderless.