Poetry from The Literary Review


What the Crow Does Is Not Singing

On winter mornings
when no bird sings,
the crow represents all ideas.
On fire with purple and green,
blazing black against the snow,
its feathers eat the sun.
The silence is pure as
the ring of the rim
of a crystal glass.

The crow stands alone
in the white field, fills my eye
with its oval shape.
I will look out darkly
and sing the morning myself:
all consonants with no
split in my tongue.
I'll leave the lightsome vowels
to the wren, the wood thrush
when they return in the simple spring,
unaware of how it was here
for us in the snow, how harsh
the song we had to sing,
how cold the words.