The Night Crow

Of course, I am white. I glow
Like a ghost in the least light.
I keep out of the day’s light.

I do not need stealth to hunt.
If you can see in the dark
Or the dim, you can see me.

I doubt you’ll look. No one looks.
I just hunt. I stand and wait.
I croak in the dark by creeks

And ponds, like the frogs I eat.
I am small but I’m a beast.
I have to eat. I can see

Things no kinds of eyes but mine
Are known to see—I trace waves
Where moon-struck cats squint at black.

I wake up when the world sleeps.
Well, not the world. The great world
Wakes with me. You keep your dream.

In the World There Must Bee of All Sorts

Does there? I met a young man,

Once, in the land that once was

Home to all of us, a man

Whose blood, he said, was so mixed,

He could claim each named mass home

But felt that he came from none.

His name was Morn. Yes, it was

Not his birth name. It was close.

He said, more than once that day

I spent with him, My da said

You should be sure you do not

Count out a soul. They’re all good.

Takes all types to make a world.

Seems wise. Seems shrewd and kind, too.

I liked him. I knew he was

On the make—the take as well—

But I liked him. Years and years

On, I find I have to ask,

For real? Do we need all types,

Each one, to make a whole world?

I think the world would do fine

Sans my type, and I can think

Of a few more types it might

Not need much, to be a world.

I’m not sure the world needs types

Of us in the least. We do.

We need to make and have kinds—

Form dents, beats, marks, sketched stones, strikes—

We need to have all our types.

They’re our made world. Not the night’s.

(oh friends)

There’s just that—the choked sob
At the end of a line
That used to be one long
Line in the Greek: (oh friends).
Notes don’t seem the best way
To parse it in our tongue,

But it speaks its own way.
Troy is gone. The war’s done.
It’s all loss, grief: (oh friends).
Some days I look out there
And see our walls still stand,
Our homes, too, but . . . (oh friends).