The day meets highest on the hill where we break

to an overlooked field bedded with doves.
My brother lets go a rock across the grass

and overhead, almost in anticipation,
two birds flash and start. We pick them off

yards apart, two quick cracks and each drop. 
Like a dog I sniff their bodies out. The first I find

shot through, cleanly dead but mangled, pocked
with birdshot. I leave him for the long-winged

noon pickers keenly convened in trees.
The other dove I come to after some sifting,

crouched and moving slow, folding back 
high grass like an animal hot for bedding.

She’s on her side, one eye sunward, the other 
seeing nothing. One wing-flag burst

and the poor thing flops, matching my footfall 
staccato, taken with wary anticipation.

I bend to pick her up, blood spotting fingers. 
I look to my brother further and shout about

what to do: the meat’s good, only, she’s
alive—he tells me take her head between

thumb and forefinger, then flick your wrists

and off it should come. Only, I forget

to flick and twist instead the thing’s head
slowly, several times around its body

so the tongue propelled breaks and lolls
around its beak and eyes wide grow

wider—she almost seems to want to speak,
or choke some final word in my straining

to strangle the diminutive, tufted thing.
I close my eyes to what it seems to see

in me and finish with a flourish of disjointed
tugging, tossing as offering to daffodils

the stressed head, eyes aware and watching
my own form grow small against the green.