Mockingbird Ode

Scat doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something
to give a song a flavor.

  —Jelly Roll Morton

O manic mimic, jingle trickster,
sound mirror, I salute you, fellow thief
and midnight raconteur. Tonight
it’s you and me. Teach me
the secret plosives, sung to no one
but the One who twizzle-swishes
through thigh-high oat grass,
tickling the spikelets into raspy praise.
The earnest crickets and frogs
sound only like themselves in love

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