Crow

A poem

Photo by Pete Nuij on Unsplash

I gleam in the sunlight like polished ebony

hard against the flaccid sky

beak-knife stabbing the air.

I am lord of my surveillance

commanding rooftops,

telephone poles and aerials,

I stalk the walls

calling like to like and raucously

embellish the wind.

There is no music in me

but what I feel in the wires,

no compassion but what I tear

from dead flesh

no evil but what imagination

and false omens pretend –

I am a large black bird

in a fearful world.