Between Two Rivers

A portal into the unknown.

Mornings I’ve now stared at it, this mystery
a pigeon left behind in its hurried flight:
a dark window two houses down. Tucked snugly

in its cream-colored brick blanket, it opens into
pure void—sometimes brown if the sun is right
above us. Mostly it’s pitch-black, a perfect

portal with specific gravity pulling
the gaze into the gates to the unknown.
There are, as I see it, two ways of fixing

the issue: either I capture the pigeon,
that winged culprit, and interrogate it—
or I walk over to ask the neighbors. But

dispelling the mystery means dissolving
its poetry—disenchantment of a simple
square in the mind’s eye, endless possibility

reduced to a single story: we keep the light
off all the time, we get so much of it
already in the summer. But your bedroom
looks so nice with that fresh coat of paint.