Thirteen Ways of Looking at Crows   

 

1.

Pick your symbols --

light, dark

death, fortune

and there you hold

a crow.

 

2.

Uninvited dinner guests

arrive in flurry

casting lots

for the first lunge.

 

3.

Ever vigilant

crows guide

suspicious travelers

into their own

beguiled darkness.

 

4.

You will get there

as the crow flies --

circling, darting

losing your way

to the wind in your heart.

 

5.

When you feel contrary

the crow bellows

barks and blinks

leaving you

in ruffled vindication.

 

6.

Along the creek

I am watched --

they know my face

telling the others

where I live.

 

7.

Mona Lisa follows

her foreign suitors

with steely crow’s eyes

but no eyebrows.

 

8.

Edged in frost,

a murderous chorus

erupts in fields

pounding the chill

like wild hammers.

 

9.

A caw rips through

lyric song

like a saw

and is remembered

for its pitch.

 

10.

As they dapple

the sky in ebony gloss

then settle together

I know I’m surrounded 

by board members.

 

11.

The first crow took

my father’s last breath

the mathematics of it

played out in a long

black stream of air.

 

12.

When the snows drift

the hungry crows leave

behind a white boned menagerie.

 

13.

What else may

revel in rot

and find its life there

but a crow.

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Rebecca Surmont lives in MN which invites exploration of the seasons and cycles of life that is often expressed in her work. Her poems have been in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Topical Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, Minneapolis' Southwest Journal, and Seasons, by Trolley Car Press.

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