Sleeping With The Mockingbird Poem by Taylor Graham

He sings in the voices of people
I've lost. Mother, father, one
old lover. Friends, some gone
without my noticing. He changes
dialect. He improvises,
he brings them back.
But his song
is of people disappearing, a mock-
masked carnival, a chorus of dead
voices masquerading in a mocker
call.

This same familiar room fades
into twilight. Outside
a bird reminds me of forgotten
voices
until he takes my own
voice too, and scats it so I
wouldn't recognize, and goes on
improvising song on song on song.