I Am Trying to Love the Whole World

but you can’t keep everything.

You can only enter the sleepless

 rooms repeating, more slowly

& in alphabetical order

the names of birds: albatross bunting cormorant dove. Albatross

 bunting cormorant

instead of your dead friends

don’t you mean?

Mean egret. Mean grackle. Mean humming.

Keep humming. Keep jay.

Say kingfisher. Say loon.

Say despite the racoons screeching

 all night like blown timing belts

high in the trash trees

while the skeletal fence cats carry on

 their cage match over moonlight.

Say Katie Rhonda Shimi T I mean

mocking mocking

 & still we haven’t finished

cleaning out your studio, your drawers

 full of heart-shaped catalpa leaves

sketches of standing ovations

 for melancholic rock stars, charm

bracelets & the chiseled gray

 mountains of Spain, over which

we had yet to fly.

& your laugh like an ambulance,

& your laugh like the elephant grass.