Before it vanished into the scrubby tangles

of brush that mark the edge of our yard,

there was the on-the-prowl bobcat we watched

from the window stride across our lawn not long

before the memorial began. A day or two later,

an otter—the first one ever seen in the pond

behind your home—left a little V-shaped wake

that widened, disappeared. Toward the end

of a hike last month, a pileated woodpecker

followed your family for a half mile, maybe more,

and then—I can’t help but add to this bestiary

of you—there was that goldfinch, not much

more than a fleeting yellow blur, I spotted

the same week your heart stopped during

a X-country race for reasons we’ll never know.

I’m guessing you’d hate this. I’m guessing

you’d bring your quick-draw stink-eye blazing

to any thought that a chance glimpse of some

creature might offer a version of you. And still,

that lemon-colored flash seemed like an echo

of the poem that still hangs in your room

in which goldfinch feast on thorns. In the end,

we can’t help it. Now that you’re gone,

we’re left trying to pretend the world remains

a legible place, one that might on occasion

hurl forth a message anyone could read

as easily as the paper scrap I pulled from

a fortune cookie on the night we learned

you were going to die: May winds blow

softly upon your sprint. There’s no chance you

wouldn’t call bullshit on any of us looking for

meaning in how spirit is confused with sprint,

and yet that botched blessing is taped to our fridge

nonetheless. It’s not as if there’s solace to find

anywhere else. It’s not as if there are words trying

to make sense of your death that wouldn’t also

be packed with mistakes, much like this poem,

adrift with descriptions of animals when all

in the end I’m trying to say is Anna, we miss you.

Sweet Anna, you are missed.