a lot of dead crows 

​

I spent the day in an open field. Weeds and

other hardy flowers I didn’t know. 

Tractors were already lined up to begin

the next row of homes. Snakes were mirrors

coiled along the dirt, and a few trees 

on the outskirts still managing to pull water.

​

I followed a trail made by hikers or dog walkers from the suburbs behind, and on one side:

beer cans, condoms, discarded fast-food

the other, a couch and mattress, cut tires. Ahead were all things together like a retired scrapyard filling with scrap. No one was here but they were and I was here now, imprinting my shoes.

​

Further on, a coyote limped—smaller

than they usually are. I guess it mattered

what one meant, and that soon people

would be here all the time. I kept on going

toward a girl hunched over, closer— 

 

and saw she was a tiny woman 

wearing a pink backpack, the silhouette

of a child, and she looked at 

what she was looking at, then looked

at me, and I looked at what she was 

looking at, and we were both looking

at the same thing, and it was 

a lot of dead crows.

 

And she kept standing there while I sat

beside her, and she sat beside me. 

Crows in black uniform cawed above

the bodies that looked like their bodies

and she perched her head 

on my shoulder 

looking at the dead crows.

​

And I felt the razor blades in her pocket, sunlight building in the white of her pills,

the hazy thrush of abandonment— 

thinking there will soon be no room left

for the woman, the crows, and me.