The Crow

No, he’s not. He’s just a crow,
doing his crow thing:
black garb, harsh cry,
stiff strut. Yet it’s his lot
to appear less bird
than myth. Descending
on the ridge of a roof,
he becomes his own
heraldic logo, cloaked
silhouette, till he tires of that
and releases himself
with a lavish, all-elbows show
of up-floundering aerodynamics.
You’ve heard a sky
full of his ego-strife
and bullying panics.
Courtship for him
is arranging his feathers
askew and doing a truculent
war-jig in front of the object
of his desire; and yet they say
he mates for life. Even so,
you mustn’t forget:
he’s just a crow.

from The Curiosities, unpublished poems, © Christopher Reid 2013, used by permission of the author.

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