There Is the Wingspan

There Is the Wingspan

Kill no birds
with sixty stones,
with one thousand stones.

How is a bird
an inconvenience.
Their songs, that are

not about us.
Are fallen feathers
troubling. Why do we

take them home,
then, collect them
like sand from beaches

we have been to,
dirt, rocks, seashells,
photographs of water.

In no eulogy
has it been said:
she was efficient,

marvelously efficient.
It is not useful
to remember

how a person made
you feel, or how
they looked,

but that is
what we keep
of them, how

she struggled with
the umbrella that day,
laughing, how he

hummed with the
headphones on,
never noticing.



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The title from this poem is taken from a line in the James Tate poem, "The Eagle Exterminating Company."