Dear Birds [Mark Yakich]

Much is made of the size of your heart.
Or the way some of you pull an earthworm
To death. Compare for example, this portrait
Of my husband, the artist, three cocktails in:

Fish in the morning, fellatio in the afternoon,
Philosophizing after dinner. Sucking on
A hazelnut in haze and hard rain, he pulls off
It all: pain, politeness, and unemployment.

I admit, it does please me to think of him
Mourning my death. Tissue by tissue, he'll paint
The orange groves and narrow bridle paths.
He'll arrange colors like music that coats the ear.

So is heartache really a mistake? The question is
Realer than any answer can be: One comes upon
The hills and then the pills. But not everyone,
My little sugar skulls, can eat their mistakes.