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The crows brought black awkward rips to bear on the day, strutting through the low meadows their imperious plague, their blue-black flu glare— and then their blacker breath of wings lifting into the lowest branches of the pines where they waited for my heart to explode and no one to come. So they could come. I hated them for nothing. I wanted a crow poem. Gossips interrupted by their subject, they let the room of the world go quiet as I passed. They rowed higher into the rafters, peered out over ledges. Meanwhile, peonies are content with the black ant feet circling, touching, prodding, circling the edges of their petals as a blind old woman might learn the face of a boy who bears her name forward into the world on his countenance. A boy, sweet with a milk smell on his skin who recalls for her the Easter service, and she coaxes him, listens to the petals of his lips tell his story. I was that boy, believing He is risen, and I need again the feminine vision, for the peony will open, white with religion, ants fallen—like soldiers around the tomb. So I shall be content with crows as I was content walking home last night, a moth at the throat, a damp-winged luna moth who thought my throat a moon, a warm home in a dark wood. This is the crow poem, I thought, clutching and frantic on me, ironic with white and soft green wingblow climbing up my chin, off and leaving me, dark as if inside a sleeping crow... |