After long journeys
I came to a yellow room.

Cream-colored, actually,
but the sun was on the walls.

And a shadow too,
a vague silhouette

of slatted blinds and
a man in a fedora

hat.

Head and torso and
hat, in a raked, rapacious

perspective. Nose
like Dick Tracy's,

like the Silver Streak, like
chrysanthemum petals

dipped in snow. What
was he looking at?

2.

Sunset,
the crows
come back,
black fruit
to the
tree—

3.

their quills
the green of

garbage bags,
or oil on a

puddle, or mice
under punched-

out eyes—

4.

next to invisible except
under hard inspection.

Nothing to see from here
except their shadows

on the sky, but that
is enough to inveigle

attention sometimes. The
clients drone. Crows convene

Like this only in winter. It
is the season of no

mating and pickings
next to nothing: bones

from McBurger's; jelly
from a squirrel that

didn't look both ways.
Hungry happy chilly little

neighbors, those crows. One
regards the next, and the next

the next, and so on, to
oblivion.