Emma Aylor

Where I live for now they
say the crows are smaller
overall; bill also small—
these
our mythmade familiars,
harbingers of
the devil’s own luck. I see
them and think
of mountains, younger
hikes in the shortest
days among brittle
limbs and lichened
slabs left like so
much midden: the Priest,
Devil’s Marbleyard, Harkening
Hill. The long grasses whose
color stole along
with the gone sun, leaving
a two-dimensioned
bright.
There the black
angles roosted stickily, calls
ragged as the dry grass
leaving burrs at our ankles.
I learned lately
that crows may not
mourn
exactly, but do
learn places associated
with conspecific
death, learn the people
they must associate with crisis, learn
the masks volunteers
had to wear,
as controls, as charms
against being too
poorly remembered.
On my last
trip home from back
home one eyed me from slack
wire beside the gas
station, seeing my wild
face more closely
than I may
myself, wary of
risk; planning
to remember a version
of being I’ve made
plans plain to waive.