When the three crows climb up the sides of the wind above the hill
And are thrown back down by invisible hands
Do they feel as though they ride
On tricky slipstreams, dissolving sureness, or are they helped by coherent
limbs?
Why do you ask when you know?
Maybe they catch sole drifts of
A single lonely giant spanning and mapping the hills,
Or hang on to its fat finger churning the blue soils of the sky?
Why do you ask so many questions?
I ask. I lie.
I sit on the bench beneath the thorn tree and wonder how I got here again.
Wondering how a life bends along such curves, like small birds in a strong
wind.
Was it all in parts, and the singers reading off the same score?
Or did the wings of choice spread out like oily tentacles of
String, tanned flesh, odd concepts, fresh air and grass?
Would this one hill be enough to call me here? Or do beaks complete
The thing, gathering at the bend to agree that that’s enough?
And sing along to the tongues of long horizons in black prismatic songs?
What would it be, dark and feathery, wind bent and stitched together,
That performs the autopsies on unreliable memories again?
-Stoke Resident, 2022