Crow\'s Gambit

Beneath the moon’s unblinking eye, they gather—

a parliament of shadows in the pine,

their voices stitching the twilight to a tapestry

of caws and echoes, a language only

half-translated by the wind.

 

They wear the dusk like a second beak,

polished onyx eyes that hold the weight

of every secret ever buried under snow.

 

No dirge in their chorus, just the crisp

arrangement of survival—a feast of acorns,

a scavenged steak, the occasional shine

of a soda can reflecting a thousand suns.

 

We call them omens, but they are critics,

assessing our dramas with the calm

of those who’ve seen empires crumble

into gardens. They know the value

of a good memory—the way a human’s

face lingers in their mental ledger,

grain by grain, a tally of friend or foe.

 

Watch them dance in the empty lot,

a ballet of feet and wings, deliberate,

mocking the notion that play is frivolous.

 

They’ve solved puzzles that give our clocks

reason to tick. Yet we offer them myths:

Aesop’s thirsty trickster, the bad omen,

the thief in the raven’s coat.

 

But here’s the truth between the caws:

they are the first to notice when the world shifts—

when a storm brews in a stranger’s heart,

when grief nests in the marrow. They are

the recyclers of our forgotten things:

bones, bullets, broken necklaces,

and the occasional wedding ring, glinting

like a promise in their gravelly nest.

 

 

So let them perch on your shoulder—

these scholars of the unseen. Let them teach

you how to hold light and darkness

in the same black-feathered hand.

 

For what is a crow but a mirror,

flashing the truth we’re too blind

to claim?