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The following poem is where the line "Elsewhere crows are laughing" came from. I wrote it at the Sewanee Writers' Conference last summer. Of my more recent poems (those written in the last couple of years) this is easily one of my most abstract. Though grounded in almost exclusively concrete language, the poem's purpose remains vague. For that reason, I don't expect this piece to make it much further than this blog, publication-wise. Of course, that's true of most of my poems, so you never know. The market does tend toward nonsense. Nonetheless, I like it for its stream-of-consciousness pace--the pace by which we normally travel, especially the speed of our thoughts and the associations that come most quickly.

Sewanee from Humphreys Hall

Elsewhere crows are laughing,

Giving each other hell, but the two

That I am watching keep their cool

And peck the earth.

A rocking chair is fine

On a fine day like this.

But mine won’t rock.

It only sits.

My two crows share a space

I’d otherwise think

Was too close for their comforts.

Bat-berserk , those elsewhere crows

Rout each other out of trees,

Only to relinquish moments later.

Such a fine day for July.

Eighty degrees tops and a breeze

That rustles up an October sense.

I think of brunswick stew.

In July. It’s a lie,

I know, but take what you can get.

Come next week, August,

At the latest, I’ll think of now

Like a story I made up

And confused for real

But came to terms with in the end.

Remembering the fiction, the headache

Of setting the scene.

Blocking the dialogue between me

And my crows that have flown.

To the graveyard, of all things.

But make nothing of that.

Or of the septuagenarian reading the names out loud,

The dates—

Her hand is in the elbow of his light jacket.

Or of the church bells donging four.