crow culture

i am a crow                dark and hollowed out

having forgotten how to whisper i call to you  (poet of the night as

predisposed     to the sorrow and gentle loneliness     as unkind

and bound for the sky              the big light on like a moon while you sleep)

i am your crow though             you are just a guest in my house

eating my food wearing my clothes     (strange girl you are becoming something

endowed in black feathers                   dripping with the substance

that collects under morning eyes         humming what remains of a melody you once knew)

girl-crow           half of something        this is your reckoning  so remember this

carve it into your bones            remember this and nothing else

(the world is yours!      you are everything that is beautiful about it

you fell from the stars wrapped in the caul      clenching the sun in one tiny fist

screaming with the fear and joy of life!

i will follow you and be what you search for in the faces of men  what you glimpse in the

strangest places  what you will one day find on your bedside table  or amongst the linen  or

between the pages of a book  or kicked under the couch; you will look at me in the palm of your hand when i have lost my feathers and only the warmth of your breath keeps me from dying

you will look at me and smile eyes wet with the tears of the same joy

and a new kind of fear and you will tell me that you lived)