In the crow stories, September turns black early,
lambs darken for luck.
The tellers themselves dress in oil slicks,
call no with sore throats
then erupt like breakers overstressed by amps.

In the company of speakable beings they are ominous
and know it, sometimes crossing a path
to see them turn back, cawing to have them fall,
sky to the west grumbling,
the east studded with flies, more of themselves
smaller as molecules, besotted,
wildly zig zagging, colliding, little black skins for the devil
should he lose one.

Maybe it isn't collisions. Maybe mutation is a binge,
a chromosome having a whiff
of an ester of alcohol alone, lonely,
or taking a neutrino through the heart
and something is born with no knuckle bones.

Having no mountains, we have clouds that compress
geology to vapor. These are the storm birds
long in advance, crow clouds.
I always wanted an older face, body whose muscles
flew under my skin.
Now that I have them, I think the next thing is to grow
into a prophecy, a feathered blackness
like the Kaaba, the crow.

Pleiades 2000