Wendy Scott: December Sketchbook

            I have tried to find for us a shape for all this grief . . . .

                the few ragged crows that could have been Van Gogh’s birds

                                                                                                        Richard Jackson

1
 
They bring the night,
crows, gathering silently.
Murders cross the sky,
faster than rush hour, swarming
above the stop, slide, of cars.
Crows land, bury branches
black on the darkening.
Dozens, then hundreds,
dropping, cloaking the trees.

 

2
 
I brace, avoid windows,
not even a mourning dove
below these unyielding limbs.
Cold radiates into, from bricks
shrunk tight above contracted tarmac.
Metallic skies empty, snow grays
as it falls. Night begins at four:
falls like a drunk by five
crushes us with inescapable arms.

 

3
 
Shortest day and sixty degrees.
Rain: heavy, then light, then heavy.
Fourteen lamps and a lit tree.
It isn’t night in here
until I say so.

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