Crow Land

Crow Land

Cool air at dawn makes sound travel further,
from the dawn chorus to a blackbird’s call,
when the crows fly in, growing ink splotches
blotting out the patchy rice paper sky.
Two carrion crows chase a leveret
round makeshift burrows into the coppice,
its hide-out now under a dense blackthorn.
A wood pigeon and a collard dove flee
the chestnut tree in outrageous protest.

Limited to human amplitude
the mind must listen beyond sound, tune in
to higher vibrations for bird meaning.
A chase is not all about survival
or attraction, but it’s life at the edge,
as if birds were unearthly and ghost-like,
as if wings were hands to urge and wave on
the stagnant flow of air, play down tales
of crop thieving or fidelity flutters.

Crows build their land by circling the treetops
with their own crow energy and voices.
Crow laws are issued in strong crow language
with frontiers laid down in keep-out-pattern
still claiming links between life and the dead.
Forever, in the east, will be a chase
of the sun crow after the white moon hare.
Here we have craw-music, tongues in the air,
repeated riddles of death and rebirth
that furtively live on carrion,
sneak iridescence into bleak blackness.