Not enough fireflies winking over the lawn
             to brighten even one
of those canning jars you used in childhood.

And the crows no longer roistering at dusk
             behind your house. That’s where it starts
tonight—your mental list

of grievances like the reckoning
             of a miser over his cache.
Or is it to master them that you recite the small

along with the large affronts—
             the burnt rice, the wildfires—and you
go on listing them to yourself:

vacant beehives, beached whales,
             the sea redrawing the coastline—
until the list moves closer in,

until you’re naming those no longer
             at the table—husband, daughter,
friends—so by contrast even your worst losses

seem no more than breadcrumbs
             swept into a cupped hand
to feed the sparrows.

Image: Daniel Feliciano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.