Look, you know you can’t die in a poem.
So, why write in one you don’t want to?
And as for beds, well, a bed’s a nest
Or a ditch or a cage. Odds are good
You’ll die in some kind of bed-like space.
You can write a good death in a poem,
And you did—it must have been worth it.
You wrote no, but what you wrote’s in print,
Yes? A dove has no ears for a wren.
It’s sad, sang the wren, no one notes that.
Birds don’t tune to birds not their own kind.
Why does it take the ears of an ape
To love the whole choir of us at once?
The dove moaned. The wren fled, who knows when.
