Crow Poems Part I

Epitaph for a Crow
By Kristen Clapper Bergsman

I am an accidental undertaker.
Crossing the street to the neighborhood grocery,
I find a dead crow in the street,
eyelids closed to the thump-bump of passing tires.

Trailing behind a speeding truck,
a lick of road wind lifts the black body.
It glides for a moment, flapping a wing.
Even in death, a crow is built for flight.

Holding the crow in yesterday’s newspaper,
I pause on the sidewalk.
Creased black feet, empty,
reach out from a corner of the paper.

There is no room for a dead crow in this city.
No place to bury the leftover dead.
I give the crow to a blackberry bush,
a newspaper casket among weeds.