2010 poem 12.

American Crow,

drawn in a black walnut tree, turned
in a glare toward us, as it guards the eggs
of the ruby-throated hummingbird
clutched in their tiny nest.

The walnuts are green, like unripe apples,
like olives.  Though the crow is
extremely shy, he is also cunning and employs
all his ingenuity in counteracting

the evil machinations of his enemies.
There is a purple gleam to the edge of his wing.
His eye is brown and he does not look
like a friend.  The book is enormous—

the size of a slim suitcase, printed
on elephant folio, but it too required
some ingenuity:  the artist himself
burned his early drawings to force himself

to improve.  Once he came home from traveling
to find that rats had eaten two hundred.
He had few friends in the Academy.
In England, the American Woodsman

sold subscriptions and paintings, hawked
animal skins.  Upon sighting a traveler from
afar, the crow beats the points of his wings
jerks his tail once or twice, bows his head

and merrily sounds the joy without knowing,
of course, if there is a gun in the offing,
if the traveler will shoot him for the price.
The crow is omnivorous.  Like the artist,

he is archetypal:  when he sounds his alarm.
When he delights in the eggs of other birds.
When his fellows betake themselves to flight.
Broken-winged. Fond of snakes. Its attachments

not surpassed by those of any other bird.
Nesting upon the precipitous rock. Scarce
upon the coast of Labrador, concealed
as much as possible from the eye of man.

*italicized portions taken from Audubon’s annotation of his drawing “American Crow.”

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