All Roads

Once I read a poem in which a man follows
what appears to be a dove through the streets
of a hollowed-out city, his head craned upward
beyond surveillance towers and clotheslines
billowing with laundry in the heat. In the poem,
the poet makes us know that the sighting
of anything with wings has become a rarity.
You could bring your questions to the ancient trees
amid the ruins surrounding this place. But they
keep their memories to themselves. There,
as here, the wilderness brilliantly escapes
capture even as some things move a little closer
each day: ears and jaws twitching, until finally
a pack of them sits in a circle just outside the door.