the crows sing out

The sky is only clouds and motion, the afternoon so startled and bright. Shadows stuck sudden to the wall waving, so slow and certain of goodbye. Vultures glide on formal wings, their distant brushwork a deft suggestion at the depths above. You follow the map of the cracks in the plaster. You follow the argument loosed from the crows. The song of all want and abandon. The place where the language gets so tangled with the tongue. The sky is painted fresh with every wing.

This is the moment, as it always is. Measured in heaps and flora, counted in jags and spurts. How the sad sustain predicted, how the spent dance demurred. The blunt population and the bleeding hues. The story of beauty always told in changing lanes and missed connections. The story of beauty always mistaking discovery for invention, invention for a magic spell. The crow sounds, metallic and jagged and just unstrung. The crow reveals its instrument tumbling with the fray. The price seems so prescient you assume that your empty pockets mean you paid.

The sky shifts and stammers, like it just dodged a bullet. The neighbor's dog just won't stop its barking. This morning's rain scarcely a memory and the dust bears no witness to any but the wind. I pause between the reach of shadows, I slow beneath the clouds and pines. Flies flit and the wind walks a top the trees. The tide of breath, the flow of blood, the song of the sky, the rhythm of the heart. I speak aloud every prayer and spell, I loose the names, and shatter ancient chains. The crows sing out each sentence, every roost as near as dusk. Every day another raucous prison break scattered into gossip. Every day so doomed and bright.