Painting by Elaine Brown Folgar
Murder!
People love to talk about names of groups like conference of doves, murmuration of starlings, parliament of owls, but crows are the favorite. I think about this as I'm walking along a country road and there's Fox trotting in front of me, teeth clenched firmly around Squirrel—big limp body, grey tail dangling—while above and around us Crow screeches, piercing the morning stillness with cries, as I begin to understand the true nature of Crow: it's not who they are, but what they are saying.
The Good Kind of Chill
My butt gets cold, as snow seeps in, past the gloves I sit on,
the stream below me, opened in places to show dark stones
I stare at, like a portal to the depths of a memory of psychedelics,
or when I got high on rapid breath, breathing with intention,
a meditation taking me out of myself, like good poetry,
transporting me beyond the beyond I've known, breaking me
like Humpty Dumpty, so I don't know when I'll be my own again,
when words will mean what they once meant, when wet was cold
or clammy, splashed or submerged, as when water splashed
on her hand enacted the word to Helen. Corduroys, warmer than
jeans, still let snow in, like a good book, chilling from the butt up—
good poems blow my lid off too, letting fresh air in, as Emily
would've wished. I sit as snow melts and shifts, opening a rabbit-hole,
so I may disappear Alice-like into it.
