Name a poet who doesn’t write of death, and I’ll tell you
that poet isn’t writing poems. Death waits in each of us—

our hungry imaginations, the cello notes of midnight clocks,
high red-cheeked fevers that drag our mothers to their knees.

Stand at the ocean, feel your insignificance, the way everyone
facing the water first discovers how small they truly are.

Listen to the tango mewing of the hundred circling gulls—
remember when you learned how they mate for life, a goal

you could not accomplish. Watch them turn the work of flying
into an improbable dance—dropping then catching themselves,

over and over, the way for a moment between each footstep
your whole body is balanced on something slender as a wing.