In the final room, the heart’s cabinet—
a world, that cabinet, living in it
all the stars you know, the mockingbird that
kept you up, calling all birds anywhere
(you missed it when it was gone), your first
praying mantis (atop a chain link fence),
the warm toast smell of your first dog, the scent
of baby sisters and brothers, cotton,
sweet, later, men’s cologne, some unknown
country, forests and wildlife and nothing
domesticated, the sound of soul on
the radio, and also in a little
house, little shaking house, the undersound
sound of caresses or moving in sleep,
the silence of knowing, speechlessness,
the silence from one breath to another,
the silence of the pond before crickets
and frogs and cicadas kick up the sound,
all the almost things, shadows of things that were,
shadows on the ceiling, in the doorway
there where nothing waits for something else
because this is the cabinet of all
you can take with you, along with all you are.