In winter a crow flew at my head
because her fledgling warmed
the brute nest of my fist. Ah,
the pearl clipped in her yellow beak
fell from her cry of “Ransom,” and
I freed my bird for grace.
There in the pearl I prophesied
a ball to gaze in, with the stars
mirrored upon it as it held
the image of the crow at core.
Spread-eagled in the royal orb,
the black bird grew, one foot
holding lightning and the other,
worms: a herald arrogance.
I saw my fortune, iridescent
with deceit, my golden mask
the operative profile on a coin
haloed in motto: Order Reigns,
and backed by pestilent wings.
The window in this easter egg
exposed the blood’s close tenement
where out-sized eyes, two bright
black puddles in tarred grass,
were imminent with birth,
and hunger’s instrument, the beak,
armored its hinterland of flesh
with bone. It will crack out
of art, the image at full term,
and cast about for meal.
How I hoped for a peaceable bird,
foolish as the gooney or dove!,
that would crack out of will
unhungry but immune to fists,
but I expect some arrogance
in flesh, be it of pigeons
or flightless birds, and do not know
a trustable source of order in
designs. I hear of Yeats’ trick,
autocratic in the metal,
and of Picasso’s normative dove,
gala with hopes, but what I eat
is this admonitory crow.
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