SIX CROWS

BENJAMIN CUTLER

A murder, clotting
in the branches
 
of a riverside poplar—not dead,
as you imagine,
 
but dying—too leaf-poor
and bare for the rich
 
summer. They sit
like small black burls
 
on the sloughing bark and cry
that old angry song—the words
 
as deep as our memory of breaking,
biting, and sucking bone:
 
that old, scavenger verse:
here is mine, here is mine,
 
here is mine.

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