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Whale Fall reading at Poetry Flash

“Whale Fall” Reading at Poetry Flash, 2017.

Crow Teaches the Song of Himself

I walk out into kelp smell, clouds of swifts
rising from roof-edges
and here’s one fine crow—
taking, like me, the air.

Here’s striped poppies with orange flauntings,
yellow lupine, purple irises
and the smell of sulfur-colored mustard
and wild tomatoes—

and my friend this one fine crow
is swanking down the path ahead of me.

Ah, how he is taken with himself!
How he adorns the day!
For the whole sky rides in his blue-black feathers
and the sun of his yellow eye!

And I too now swank—
I too in his wake
loaf and stroll
and glint my shining eyes

at a pack of truant gulls whooping and hellinga
at leapfrog terns and peregrines
and small black-and-yellow bees in the lupine.

And we nod to right and left
over our gleaming shoulders—
two fine crows parading—

taken with ourselves
and giving pleasure

singing the song of being alive and fine to see.