“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination.”– Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
Crow cry parts
the morning mist,
obsidian, and
winter crisp.
Oil sleek and
sickle-beaked,
they beat their
bleary wings.
What dread
their presence brings.
What foreboding dreams.
These are not
like Mary’s
wild geese,
so feathery
and free,
belonging to
a gentle world
and the family
of things.
No, these crows
are bird-shaped
black sheep—
shadows in
the sunlight,
fabric of
deep midnight.
They ruffle
and shift
in their
beholder’s eye-
morbid and mystic
omens they fly,
high above reason
and the sensible mind-
embodying that discrete side
of every man, woman,
and somber child:
imitators,
emulators,
cry-
cry-
cry.
pm poetry 