There was a shape on the grass
A tree rising over it like the skin line of smoke
Smooth gloss rub and
Nacre black feathers
With vanes like blades of water
lying by the tar soaked edge of a beach.
The eyes were of shifting metal,
Melting and dropping and reforming,
What or if they saw
They saw madness
I put my hand on the crow
Not crow, not alive, not beak, not black
But mine.
Faint webbed skin lying against sleek feather
kneeling curved over small crumpled body
Dotted black on a flat spread line of green,
A strand of feather against the billowing blue sky.
And the grass russet against the head,
Rushed away from the body
It rolled green towards the edges
Ran into stalks of gold swaying warily
And then down, down into the brown earth sinking into purple.
