Give Me a Crow

by Robin Turner

perturbed & gleaming,
pitch black in the night of day,

the hush of a great cloudbank
lush & darkly looming, give me

the freighted air. How it calls
& calls from the almost

silence, some melody
gathering, brimming, a song

I don’t yet know the words for.
O give me the just before

an about-to-be rain, a little
psalm to hold & pocket, small

pine of beautiful ruin to come.
And then, long after

the deluge is done—
give me memory, give me ache,

the exuberance of rust,
its rough blooming.

Robin Turner makes poems and poem-like things in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press) and Elegy with Clouds & (Kelsay Books). A longtime community teaching artist, she currently works with writers from the Cancer Support Community of North Texas.