Thursday, June 22, 2017

COMMON CROW POEM

Through endless fields of fire-
blue ozone, weightless but

oppressively cloudless, she alone
goes slowly wheeling,

dragging a ragged black cloak on
secret invisible breezes—

breezes which she seems to carry
and keep underneath her,

even in this stilted dead
center of summer; while two

opportunistic eyeballs,
sharp pebbles of obsidian,

scan the heather
which rustles and sighs

beneath a few drooping deciduous
mid-western treetops.

She—the one uniquely
American scavenger,

she never rests—but neither
does she work.

She doesn't pray,
but she does not hunt;

when she spies
a good meal, she laughs

and she coughs,
both at once—

making known
to all of us down below,

the peculiar nature of this
shared paradox—

the grim intransigence
of our own good luck.