I was going to write you a poem stating how your sound is
long, and arching like
leaves to the sun. How it
curls and soars like a bluejay taking
wing from an autumn aspen tree
or how it can flit, like a hummingbird
back to the columbines that bloom
violet, and sensual as May

…But I felt like a fucking idiot
comparing your sound to birds of all things.
birds are too easy, anybody
can write a fucking poem comparing
a singer’s voice to birds, for godssake that’s too
easy

I want to compare your sound to a cigarette, but I’m afraid
that comparison might offend you… what I mean
is that your sound burns
at the end, like
leaves, if you light them, and I breathe it
there’s not a better way to say I
inhale when you sing, and what comes back
out, to the air is an echo, but it looks nice
and in response I wave and clutch at the sky
piteously, but your song
pats my back, with heavy hand and says
that things are fine and good
and your sound
can rasp like flipping book pages
your sound can roll down a grass hill in June your sound
can rope the fuckin’ moon down to where I lie
with stars in my eyes, and nothing on my tongue

And like poems about birds, your sound is impossibly easy
but like birds is nigh uncatchable
and, like the moon,
its light is fleeting
and like cigarettes, your sound
is likely killing my insides.