The Night of Crows
A poem by Michael Hawkes
September 22, 2022
A massive murder, a massacre of crows
Invaded our back lane last night.
Their panicked cries announced to all
That something somewhere wasn’t right.
Their frantic agitation filled my sleepy head with fright
So I rose to watch the bedlam, an un-precedented sight…
Exclamation marks and colons
Like punctuations in the snow,
But I couldn’t read the message,
Couldn’t get into the flow
Of the many meanings hidden,
In their frantic form of talking
And their flitting to and fro’.
Finally, as though one mind
They colonized an ancient elm.
As black foliage they filled its space
And weighed its branches down,
And every bird… facing eastward
In dead silence, bore an omen
And it seemed all wore a frown.
6/3/22 – Hawkes
Feature image: Andrew Burlone
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[/col][col size=”10″]Michael Hawkes is a survivor of all the world’s wars. He learned (and loved to rhyme) by torturing the hymns he had to sing at school. A retired West Coast fisherman living in Montreal since 2013, he is an unschooled Grandpa Moses writing an average of five poems every week.
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