A Call
        Krähe, wunderliches Tier
        —Winterreise

Black wings, black stick-legs, black beak, black eye
The monochrome of their variegated parts can dazzle
All shining in different ways
Transfiguring the light as if they'd swallowed it
In groups they blot out the sun
Or drift, a flotilla of black sails, across clouds
Crow—the name's a pale echo of what they shout
In a language we're unable to share

When I came back to that lovely campus after years away
They'd displaced the jay from the eucalyptus grove
His shriek thin and irrelevant in the smother of their caws
His little crest fragile as an apostrophe
Nothing stays fixed—their place is wherever they decide
Fighting over a dead squirrel on the asphalt
They lift reluctantly just before a car comes
To drop down the moment it's gone

Loss is their sustenance
Keen, stark, efficient, and quick
They hide things, dissemble, and make tools
In clucks, cackles, and long broad calls
They remember and remind
Not a bit of light escapes their notice
Their focus shameless and outside time
They will follow the dying lover in the song cycle to the end

Now they perch and wait on the sycamore limb near my window
Keeping a lookout on something I can't see
I know what's coming but they'll spot it first
Crows, crows—in your dark immediacy
Keep me from the lassitude of slow sorrow
Sharpen my blurry eyes
On whatever journey I'll find someday I've taken
Point me toward the gleaming you devour

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Copyright © 2022 Don Bogen All rights reserved
from The Louisville Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission