Henry Oso Quintero

CROW RECORDS THE IMPENDING DARKNESS
--AS TOLD TO BEAR 

Bear, even flying with the sun behind me
The sky is dim

With certainty I tell you this
Pentad sun is falling
I caw a long night before
A sextet sun can rise
A yellow yolk to drown out iron

But enough of culinary gormandizing
Talk of rudiment and griddles
Excites me past the point of luminosity
Seeing past the tip of wings brushing
The edge of dusk in pointillism

I caw the rain sweating out of
Earth trees falling in like gums
Of some old man

I caw the wind
Scattering picket subdivisions
The bloated heifers of the Dairy
Spooled into a grim salad plumbing
Tin and barbed wire

And Bear, I have not even rattled
About the shaking Earth
A dust of lime and cinder
I tell you all the burgs along the coast
Sister suburbs to Pompeii--and like Fox
I'm sure the grapes are sour

Bear--it is with shame I must report
Anthrax has touched men's lips
Whispering of famine, they like the Shrews
In dire need of Locusts
Have turned upon themselves
First the tail then the quarters
Finally in throws of personal phlebotomy
Sampling a haggis of their own kind

Bear--it is black and I am empty
And I ask you, Great Believer, what is life?
The flash of fireflies in the night
Is the breath of Antelope above the sage in winter
The creaking song of Aspen boughs
Heavy in their weight with red leaves
Perhaps we are their little shadows
Running across the grass, losing themselves in sunset.

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