Forgive me if I speak of it again—
the legend of their genesis—
part crocodile, part chicken
fear teaching them to take
their way skyward, bring black
to the clouds. Or the myths—
a witch’s familiar, companion of gods—
riding wind as they grip
thoughts in their claws, lay them
like rubies in Odin’s imperial hand,
so he can choose again and again
who suffers, who dies. We see them screaming
some old language
in a blown-out tree
or in lines of down-valley flight,
bound for trouble, their voices
clawed and scraping, almost legible
like they could live on our shoulders,
shit on our shirts, pick
jewels from our hair. Maybe it matters
they savor the dead, suck eyes
out of hatchlings, steal brass
off a corpse’s chest. There they are,
pieces of night, flip side of light, everything
occult or forgotten, not just soaring, soaring together,
soulmates, bonded accomplices,
getaway drivers on their way to the bank.
So many of our acts
are unpardonable, and the drives and longings
have, as our detractors warned,
returned to the nighttime roosts
of self-hate and decline. But the crows—
they’re laughing, forever dressed in their best
midnight finery, they revel
in carnage, hoppy dance
to sin. They’re so good
at being bad.
