Before Dawn, the Crows

In cold darkness
    calling from tree to tree
Laughing at
    our foolish dreams
Crooning love
    in a long lost key
Feathers at once
    oil slick and trickster
Switchblade beaks
    and talons like fish hooks
Eyes of blown glass
    tricked out in starlight
Eyes like deep space
    deeper than mothernight
Like anthracite coal
    like hard carbon steel
Shaped by hammers
    and grinding wheels
Like blind caves
    where no sun enters
Like stone faces
    in the depths of a harbor
Like dredged up
    muck from down
In the bedrock
    like fourteen men
Lying trapped
    underground
For 35 days
    with only the sounds
Of each other breathing
    each other dying
Like the mourners
    leaving in their
Long black cars
    that’s how dark
the crow’s eyes are