The morning wakes without rain,
a shimmer of green
appearing from the silhouettes
of the trees scattered between
buildings.  Silence floats
off the glossy reflections
of the windows
holding the rising sun.

I look for Crow flashing
black feathers as he calls
from somewhere I can’t see.
His voice bounces off
the brick and I imagine
he raises his sharp beak,
laughing as he follows
my eyes searching  for the sound.

I have not asked him to speak–
he does not wait for invitations—
I do not for an instant believe
he is without purpose here
on this clear morning calling me
as usual to attention.  Do you
pretend you know me?
he asks, and what can I reply?

How can you ever pretend
to know another when
you cannot even see who
this person is that you carry
with you all the time?
Who is this being that you call
yourself?  What
is their true name?

Another piece of art inspired by Nina–her joyful birds, above.  For the poem, I used a prompt posted awhile ago by Miz Quickly, in which you take lines from a poem and write them every few lines on a piece of paper and fill in the spaces between with your own words.

As Jane told me recently, it’s hard to find a poem of mine that doesn’t talk about birds.  I used lines from an Adrian C. Louis poem “Magpie in Margaritaville”, which I found in the wonderful Tupelo Press book “Native Voices”.  I couldn’t find a link to the poem online, but you can read about the poet, a member of the Paiute Tribe, here.

Also linking to earthweal, open link weekend.