Mockingbird Poem by Hailey Leithauser

No other song
or swoop (part
quiver, part swivel and
plash) with
tour de force
stray the course note
liquefactions
(its new,
bawdy air an
aria hangs in) en-
thralls,
trills, loops, soars,
startles, out-warbles,
out-brawns, more
juicily,
lifts up
the dawn, outlaws from
sackcloth, the cool
sloth of bed sheets,
from pillows
and silks
and blue-quilted, feminine
bolsters, fusses
of coverlets;
nips as the switch
of a juvenile willow, fuzz
of a nettle, to
window and window
and window and ever
toward egress, to
flurry, pollen
and petal shed,
to wet street
and wet pavement,
all sentiment intemperate,
all sentience
ephemeral.