I was walking on the Paint Creek Trail when I saw them,
crows uncountable, perched on trees all around
a single one that seemed confined to the ground.
Mean crows, sick crows, will often be exiled
and kept to the ground but this was not that;
no bolt struck to send him down, only the unwavering sky above,
the sun shining off his blackened feathers,
like the pseudo-myth of Rainbow Crow
who flew past the Earth to see the Creator
and ask to make the world warm again, he who carried
a torch of the sun’s fire across the three-day journey
and scorched his feathers black and breathed the smoke
that made his voice rough and hoarse. I could see many colors
shimmering beneath the dark of this small grounded crow
as he paced and gazed up in the trees.
The air rang with the call of his parents in the trees,
he was a teenager you see,
a raucous call, rhythmic, the sound rippling
against their vocal folds, and his in return,
sound unmarred by age, high and frantic.
The tips of his blackened feathers splayed out
like fingers losing grip, curving down limply.
He didn’t have the heart
to fold them all the way, but neither did his heart
prop them open to waver in the wind.
Perhaps he had heard the story too,
and at the time, thought it was true;
the blinding heat of the torch
in the talons of an ancestor.
perhaps he lifts his blackened
eye to that scorching wheel and huddles close
to the cool gravel beneath himself, afraid
that even a wary jump would burn him too.
For there is no slow way to start, his body would be off
the ground cradled in the endless mass of air--
but it is something necessary.
High above the perched ones call.
crows uncountable, perched on trees all around
a single one that seemed confined to the ground.
Mean crows, sick crows, will often be exiled
and kept to the ground but this was not that;
no bolt struck to send him down, only the unwavering sky above,
the sun shining off his blackened feathers,
like the pseudo-myth of Rainbow Crow
who flew past the Earth to see the Creator
and ask to make the world warm again, he who carried
a torch of the sun’s fire across the three-day journey
and scorched his feathers black and breathed the smoke
that made his voice rough and hoarse. I could see many colors
shimmering beneath the dark of this small grounded crow
as he paced and gazed up in the trees.
The air rang with the call of his parents in the trees,
he was a teenager you see,
a raucous call, rhythmic, the sound rippling
against their vocal folds, and his in return,
sound unmarred by age, high and frantic.
The tips of his blackened feathers splayed out
like fingers losing grip, curving down limply.
He didn’t have the heart
to fold them all the way, but neither did his heart
prop them open to waver in the wind.
Perhaps he had heard the story too,
and at the time, thought it was true;
the blinding heat of the torch
in the talons of an ancestor.
perhaps he lifts his blackened
eye to that scorching wheel and huddles close
to the cool gravel beneath himself, afraid
that even a wary jump would burn him too.
For there is no slow way to start, his body would be off
the ground cradled in the endless mass of air--
but it is something necessary.
High above the perched ones call.
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Rene Seledotis (he/him) is a fiction and poetry writer from the Metro-Detroit area. He earned his BA in creative writing at Oakland University and served as a poetry editor on the Oakland Arts Review, which he enjoyed so much that he started his own literary journal, 25:05 Magazine. His work has seen publication in Turtle Way Journal and Variety Pack.
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