Song of the Crow
The crows over in Europe are different
from the kind we have in New York; they
have white patches on their chests, and the way
they call is softer. Still, their appetite
for our meat is the same. They flock to the dead
and tear apart flesh; soldiers or children,
it’s all the same. It’s a celebration
when they come upon one of our battlefields.
Of course, crows eating children isn’t the sin.
Carrion is blameless. They’re cleaning
the land, scrubbing it of the evil we’ve left.
Maybe their calls from the woods are songs
honoring what we’ve given them. They’re singing
praise, thanking us for keeping them from death.
__________________
John Brantingham
Review by Paul Jones
Black birds are haunting Brantingham. Ravens scream and play games with traffic, crows call although they are different in Europe. Whatever else they do, both kinds of birds favor flesh. That work of keeping the world, woods and roads and when calling from Robert’s Woods, consciences, clean and flesh picked. All in the end, the birds do the emotional work in these poems.