Joan Benner
Superior
Being crows is their main business.
They stalk about darkly, getting on with it.
Communal but independent, they observe personal space:
in the field they plant themselves each three feet from the next,
for that’s how they establish who they are;
and if the rules are broken there’s a hue and cry,
a party gathers at speed and falls upon the offender
who’s rolled in the dust and is lucky to get away.
Their sex isn’t obvious, but they go about two by two,
recognise partners, build, raise voracious chicks
for whom at a call the posse unites in protection
to the astonishment of cats and acceleration of hawks.
They roost in the yews where the darkness matches their plumage
and, like them, remains itself the whole year round.
Important, well organised, and exceedingly bossy
they lay down the law to maintain civilisation
on their own account, regarding us as beyond the pale
though bipeds: barbarians, who’ve never developed culture.
Caw.
They stalk about darkly, getting on with it.
Communal but independent, they observe personal space:
in the field they plant themselves each three feet from the next,
for that’s how they establish who they are;
and if the rules are broken there’s a hue and cry,
a party gathers at speed and falls upon the offender
who’s rolled in the dust and is lucky to get away.
Their sex isn’t obvious, but they go about two by two,
recognise partners, build, raise voracious chicks
for whom at a call the posse unites in protection
to the astonishment of cats and acceleration of hawks.
They roost in the yews where the darkness matches their plumage
and, like them, remains itself the whole year round.
Important, well organised, and exceedingly bossy
they lay down the law to maintain civilisation
on their own account, regarding us as beyond the pale
though bipeds: barbarians, who’ve never developed culture.
Caw.
Page(s) 33
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