Crow's Sense of Humour.
undiminished by his reputation, his blackness all blue
lights and liquescent shimmerings, unburdens
himself of a hollow stalk of dead winter wheat
and pauses to consider the vast overturned bowl of the hill
just at this moment when I am trying to forget something
the crow is trying to remember: a particular gavotte, or trance
dance where the men have their arms pinioned
and the women flounce and curtsey discordantly
he is the lover of stalks, the puffer of big cigars.
I am not forgetting now, but remembering after all
as the crow lands lightly on my outstretched arm
his traces jangling and his hood all a-jitter
his metaphor is as violent as the thunderstorm
he will impart, his humour and his great black beak
tearing away at the meat of the past, baring the rib
of my disaffection, my pride and my sense of loss.
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