I love crows, and this time of year is when they seem to caw their way into my consciousness.

My friend Greg and I wrote this together a while ago:


Caw Cool Crow

Now that you’ve stolen
Fonzi’s coat

Let us go then, you and I,
and steal his white t-shirt too, for they are a pair,
and I in the one, and you in the other,
will don upside down crows' feet
and stomp peace signs up and down the black
volcanic beach mud of Guatemala,
while the sun sits on top of the horizon
like a fat bird on a wire
eyeing your navel with envy.

We'll sing songs of brotherhood,
until they stick in our craw
and we remember the upper room
where the women come and go
carrying the bacon.

Oh, do not ask "what's for breakfast?"
Let us rather go and cook up a mess.

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Yesterday the people on the bus were all talking with each other while I watched the sky catch fire. The crows were flying in it, and some sat like someone had thrown a bucket of spare commas into the trees. I also saw cranberry trees when we went through the college, their limbs so trimmed and perfectly bony. There was just enough light to see the darkened color of the berries, hanging there reminiscent of the crows. It just occurred to me that I might be the only one noticing that sky when a man sitting across from me said, "How you can see something like that and not feel warm?" and a woman who I once heard talk about how her mother used to switch her legs bloody said, "That's a Michelangelo sunset." And the chatter on the bus hushed for a moment.