Crows Save the World

                    Your gift to me, acceptance of my grief,
                    a quiet, steady presence where I sat
                    mourning for sounds of rain, of claws, of bill,
                    of ticking clocks, is sweeter still
                    for growing in the carrion of need.

                    Crows save the world from overwhelming rot.
                    Without them we would pick our way
                    through slippery, steaming, stinking shards of death.
                    The little that they know communicated loud
                    for other crows to hear, deaf crows do not survive.

                    A poem, gentle Michael said, can be the gift
                    one gives a friend.  Far better to have shared my loss
                    and not pretend.
 
 

Crows Save the World appeared in the 1999 edition
of Berkshire Review.

Copyright © 1999 Miryam Ehrlich Williamson. All rights reserved.
 

Next poem