Let my black sun glint off my black beak;
it will spawn a dark coruscation in eyes that pass below.
Let it glint off sable feathers.
Splayed primaries shudder, shine a Sirius of color.

We hold our wiry territory
five strands hung from pole to pole.
Sidle too close along the line, and beak will snap,
nape will flare. We are
an arpeggio of feathers on a blue sky stave.

The rage that sings along these wires
raises not the slightest tremor as we clasp them.

If you who weep hang up your phone,
slam your door, and stalk distracted
past the creosoted timbers holding us aloft,
our corrugated song will steel your spine.

Warm breeze plays about splayed wing.
A bored ecstasy of stretching,
another shudder, and I fold it back along me.

Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.

1. 
   butuki 2003 12 06 at 11:45:01 am

   Jungle crows have taken over Tokyo… huge crows the size of ravens. When they sit on a wall top or gable and their eyes glint down at you, there is no mistaking the intelligence. Many people shudder in discomfort and trepidation, but somehow I take comfort in knowing there are others who as intelligent, if not more, as we are, waiting on the sidelines as we screw up the world. I think crows will know what to do in the aftermath.

2. 
   butuki 2003 12 06 at 11:46:20 am

   Oh, by the way… a real sun-bleached boards and barbwire poem. Just what crows are.

3. 
   Dale 2003 12 06 at 1:53:20 pm

   Good God, this isn’t fair.  Nobody who writes prose as beautiful as yours has any business writing beautiful poetry too!

   I love crows, and this captures all their swagger and “keck.”

    

   I know, they’re a trash species — invading everywhere; loud, quarrelsome, endlessly adaptable; brutally displacing the natives.  But then, that just describes us to a tee too, doesn’t it?  I don’t see where human beings could get off, condescending to crows.  We’re the trash species par excellence.

4. 
   Rana 2003 12 07 at 9:25:02 pm

   I like crows, too.  (Not surprising!)  I especially love it when they hop along the ground, tilt their heads at you, and say “Gronk!”  I really like this poem, too; as Dale says, it really captures the essence of crow.

5. 
   Anne 2004 08 27 at 5:39:51 pm

   i have always found corvids endlessly fascinating — and so is the flow of your poem. i envy your complete comfort around words!