Mockingbird

For Barbara.

“I wonder where the mockingbird is from, and where it went.”  You said.

You’re Job, I said, when Yahweh sphinxes him for fun.

You said “It came a second night but then last night was gone.”

Job blanked, I said, on when the mountain-goats give birth,
He blanked on where Leviathans cross seas,
He blanked on why the wind both woos and kills.

You said:  “It sang beside our bed two nights, not three. Not three.”

I said I can’t explain antiphony,
it seems its own reward
and when the bird has said “amen”
another sound insults the word.

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