A Murder of Crows

by Daniel Gillespie

On a cold night in October, as winter draws ever closer

I take a walk into the forest all alone on fallen snow

When I stumble on a clearing, as the trees are disappearing

And sit down and look up peering at a branch on which a crow

Has landed for a time to sit and stare at me this crow

As he looks on me below

I step closer to the willow on which this fine black fellow

Has perched his feet to look and see the world I walk and know

I extend my hand engaging, but the bird I am enraging

As he flies away unchanging to the East I watch him go

The fine black coat upon his back flapping as he goes

This single lonely crow

I stand out there in the open on the winter ground so frozen

And ponder the crow’s own thoughts as he flies off through the snow

What was his motivation? Was there ever hesitation?

As he left his lofty station and was gone away this crow

What was he thinking in his bird brain as he went away this crow

And I thought I’ll never know

I sink down into the grass there like a sheep put out to pasture

And looking to the sky I rest in the night’s cosmic glow

The frost still lightly falling I hear a distant squalling

And see my friend, recalling how he left so long ago

Upon remembering the hours, it was not so long ago

That he left me there, this crow

I see him coming through the forest across the midnight darkness

And see many more have joined him; he is not alone, my crow

So many black birds bringing notes of macabre singing

And their tune a frightful ringing such like I have never known

The flood of fine black feathers coming like I’ve never known

As they advance patient and slow

They moved onward as a phantom, in an order far from random

As a single seamless ghost of darkened shadow as they go

I saw them ever closer and I sensed incoming danger

So I fled right from the murder, to escape the mass of crows

I took off through the forest, fleeing the murder of crows

My feet falling on the snow

I run faster onward running, each foot and step I’m stumbling

The branches in my path come faster, falling to the snow

On hand and knee I’m crawling, after untimely falling

 Their squalling, squawking calling, coming closer this I know

The birds will soon attack me and I will not leave I know

From this murder of crows

I see their black beaks glinting, as I look up at them squinting

Descending on my body, coming like the falling snow

Their beaks begin the biting, as I lie there in my writhing

I am trying to be fighting them, this mass murder of crows

This bird of night I followed off has killed me here my crow

Why me? I’ll never know

I lay there bleeding, dying, as the crows just take off flying

I know this is my deathbed with a blanket made of snow

I feel a peace descending as my life is at its ending

How I wish there were extending, but I fear it is not so

I wish to live and leave this scene but know it is not so

From the murder of crows