[GUEST POETRY]

Quarto, with Crows

by Lita Sorensen

For four days now, crows have woken me

against slate gray snow burgeoning tree limbs

I hear cries

as they pick old grape

seeds from the neighbors’ vines

and circle like ministers above tenements.

Today is bright with winter sun. The rest have kept

the sullenness of November blustering, weathered, tearful days.

Crows know how to bring on the morning

properly with chants and caws

but with laughter of hypocrites

behind earnest magisterial robes

and open eyes of gypsies.

Almost a week has passed in November,

great thief of time endgame of the year.

I have counted four crows ahead

In the tall elm tree

perched like dark sailors

up a ship’s mast preachers on a pulpit

resemblance in their stark cries

exhorting god of sky,

endless blue-white oceans.

This too, will pass (like winter)

an old lover once told me

not yet waking on my pillow,

predicting the phantasm of our love.

I look for crows every day now

in dictionaries of black symbols in webs of branches

quotation marks against sky after endless skies

in days ahead and behind me

in sighs and with sharp intakes of air.

There is something so familiar about the sound of their voices

speaking so plainly before breakfast.

"I am a writer living in Sedona, Arizona" 

-fr the author's profile page on her writing site 
"The Sutler"








.