Catbird Elegy

All morning, a catbird sang
from his various pulpits.
I was on my knees, weeding plants,
and it felt to me
as if it was me to whom he sang.
It’s a catbird trait.

Still, as anyone who knows catbirds knows,
it’s not really singing,
more a recitation
of quips and excerpts, quotations,
a few mews tossed in.

Then, that afternoon
I found a dead catbird in the alley,
neck clearly broken.
I assume it flew into a car.
Since I heard no singing,
I assumed it must be my bird.
I was truly stricken.

Then my cell phone rang:
my friend of sixty-two years
had just died that very day
in Wisconsin: one man, one bird,
one song.

How do such things happen?
And what allows us to notice
and make connections:
the morning song of this bird
became an elegy
for itself and also my friend,
and, so it seems,
was also an elegy for myself
and my death to come.