Crow calls,

silver scented chaos on a wing,

the first bird in our fable,

servant of the eternal

treated like a lesser thing,

she has pierced the veil

of remembering,

sky-scattered ash,

forlorn tales warning

of apocalypse,

past or forward-telling;

projectiles of perhaps;

of gross human failing;

humanity’s mishaps,

of greed, and taking,

wings flap through a time lapse,

whiles weave patterns in the matrix;

this crow speaks foreboding,

guarding scorch-holes in the fabric

of was, will be and is;

before we have re-written maps

burnt sticks mark those choices

that boil sap into vortices;

remnants of losses,

within traps, roots, voices

of ancestors, descendants;

death is timelessness,

this bird, Life’s last defendant;

a notice from that wilderness,

plumes find spectrums in the black,

light mirrored in air currents

and feathers on this bird back

as it guards this door to the morass

to keep watch over the verdant,

Crow stays, sentinel of this atlas,

over each bridge we should not cross;

Crow calls so long their soundbox cracks,

their message heard by the observant;

“Turn back, turn back, turn back.”

Antonia Sara Zenkevitch

To join in the creative conversation, and respond to Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompts, check out https://scvincent.com/2021/02/04/thursday-photo-prompt-appointed-writephoto/

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