something to crow about

Poetry Dispatch No.171 | June 13, 2007

Something to Crow about

Crow Ink by Sharon Auberle

Crows know.
They take their black,
raucous selves,
fire up that attitude
and never look back
at their abandoned nest
high in the pines

I wonder, sometimes,
if our lives might be no more
than the art of crows
written, for awhile
on the sky
then, in an instant,
erased by the wind…

from CROW INK, 2007

Crowlady Karma by Maggie Perry

If I follow down your sad, brown eyes
will I find a field of wild horses
or moon spirits flying wings in the wind?
All the ghosts of your past lovers
run fingers through my hair,
tell me to forget the burned scent of you.

Losing myself in the low flight of crows,
green-eyed bandits give birth.
What about the lives of other birds?
How do they eat? Sleep? Love?
I circle black against yellow sky.

All beggars of light,
your laughing scarecrow ladies
can hang their silk legs out to dry.
Tonight snow and nothing moves
in that secret ice-lace dream.

I spin fine nets of your hair,
hang red flowers as amulets
from dying apple trees.
I will find you.

from CROWLADY LETTERS, Spoon River Poetry Press, 1984

Crow’s Theology by Ted Hughes

Crow realized God loved him—
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

And he realized that God spoke Crow—
Just existing was His revelation.

But what
Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?

And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?

Crow realized there were two Gods—

One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.

from CROW, Harper & Row, 1971

Crow Goes to Margaritavill by Chris Halla

Typically
I count on wax wings and gross beaks
to let me know
when the drinking seasons have begun
When the cherries have over-ripened
then the plums
And in rare, perfect years
strawberries, raspberries
apples

But today
some generous stranger
has left two fingers of Cuervo
on her Saturday patio
and I am sipping my Sunday sermon

Satisfied that God is in his church
and all’s right enough with the world

from CROW, CR+Press, Broadside Beat #6, 2007

Crow Whisperer by Ralph Murre

Moist air, red with sun and lying
heavy as August on the fields,
seems too thick for crows to fly
to homes on the edge of woods,
their day’s work done.
Too warm, even, for their raspy complaints.
They watch, as jets pull open the zippers
that hide the sky’s secrets and
they mourn the loss of the birds’ empire.

Wright Brothers and Plymouth Rock Pilgrims
taking what they cannot return and we,
wondering
what all the cawing is about.
Flying sacred skies and bulldozing burials and
wondering
what all the cawing is about.
Lighting the dark mystery of the night and
wondering
what all the cawing is about.

Maybe I’ll listen,
in the morning’s gathering heat,
to the complaints of crows
and the whispers of the robbed.
Maybe I’ll learn to caw.
Maybe I’ll learn to whisper.

from CRUDE RED BOAT, Cross+Roads Press, 2007

man in black coat… caught
high on white birch branch
flapping about…something

Imakitō Oku

on a withered branch
a crow has settled–
autumn nightfall.

Basho