Ten Thousand Crows

Ten Thousand Crows
© Surazeus
2023 07 15

When ten thousand crows fly up in the sky 
I think they all become the words I speak, 
so I hold apple up to block the sun 
till both apple and sun become my brain 
that tries to remember why we feel hope 
though all my nameless crows fall into graves. 

I sit on eyeball of the universe 
to examine sadness of endless light 
that make crystal bones of my skeleton 
glow with words that children want to speak 
as they look down at their Earth-dusty feet 
and think about places they want to go. 

Asleep in shadow of the fractured moon, 
I eat the crow that was fried over flames 
that writhe from burning bush on Mount Sinai 
because I want to run faster than wolves 
who wear business suits and drive to the bank 
where they buy and sell feathers of sad crows. 

I follow the moon crow with thirteen eyes 
into the ruined temple on the mount 
where eyeless sages in blood-striped robes pray 
to ancient statue of Cronus the Mad 
who holds the broken lyre of Mercury 
strung taut with tangled memories of his heart. 

When water boils in cauldron of despair 
Cerridwen cooks stew from my soggy brain 
to feed me Awen of the screaming moon 
so I hop laughing in the ring of stones 
to flap my phantom wings of aching pain 
till I wake up as serpent in the grass. 

But when Taliesin names me Creirvia 
I run down to the river of lost dreams 
where the laughing crow gouges out my eye 
till I rip out my heart with grasping hands 
so she escapes on thirty moon-black wings 
as she becomes ten thousand crows who sing. 

Each cocky crow with insolent respect 
that breaks free from impudent cage of hope 
finds another grave where I will die, 
so I follow them all around the Earth 
to leave another fragment of my soul 
as apple seed in valley of cracked skulls. 

I leave ten thousand children of my heart 
in every valley of the spinning world 
where they look up at glowing clouds of faith 
and see my faceless soul gaze down at them 
for they are crows who blossom from my eggs 
as words that spring from quagmire of my brain.