After Flock of Crows

Flock of Crows (1953) 

Drybrush

study for Snow Flurries

Sometimes they're the only thing that holds it all

down to keep it

from going off on its own 

into the deep deep of the esophageal

furnace of the firmament.  Or maybe, 

because there'll always be crows, 

the something that's pinning it

will be sitting there listening to it all

go off at the close

of whatever it is that's closing.  With

the promise of it

coming back in the next ten months 

or less depending on the winter

and all you have to do is last

it out, through fall, through

December and on

into the middle of May 

and all along  you'll know it 

coming and going

because of the crows and don't you 

draw from them those omens

eventually and inevitably working

their way beneath the seams

of your teeth.  Don't you, from the farthest

of your owned acres (and into the neighbors

fallow fields) take them

into your home to keep them

through the bitterest 

of months when you burn through

your winter

cordwood early and live 

in only two rooms 

of your fourteen room house?

Don't you see them 

when the mail's slow and that wood's

getting dangerous

low and the open window

is the only going

or coming they or you will come to

know.  Don't they,

lifted from the field by some sound

that will never reach you

and scattered against the snowing

nimbo-clouds like birdshot, draw up

the dry brown grass with their corvus

claws to finally reveal

what's been

buried there?  And don't you want to

go over to its edge then and look

into whatever it is that's been 

drawn back?  If only you could make it

before the world closed

over it like a water-healing

and you halfway there and losing

your bearings when the weather

turns and even

momentarily when

the house is gone and you don't know

how to get home.  And it's only

when the black bolt is thrown

(or, because you've long known

there's ghosts) throws itself

into the flurry that you are bearing

it for the sake of bearing it

correctly and you're all of you all 

twa.  

And you're all throat.  All wing and what's

beneath. And banking to 

all winds and all of what

it, after all these years,

with the compass in your rib, bids you: banking

into the wind

to let it lift in you what it can 

lift in you, the reason why it

has been waiting for you

all this time.