Lake Effect, Spring 2015, Volume 19: "Of Crows We Dream"

Doug Ramspeck, "Of Crows We Dream"

When we first moved in together, we lived across
from a funeral home with its comings and goings,

the elongated hearse with its crow-black
countenance, the mourners with their heads bowed.

And in the field beyond the funeral home,
there was a broken jaw of light at dusk where the crows

kept the obelisks of their bodies. Then winter
darkened the sky where the birds were forming

and unforming, and in the distance, beyond
the funeral home, beyond where smoke lifted

from the crematorium, swooping with their baptistery
of black, the birds remained visible in air.