Crows
What if to taste and see, to notice things,
to stand each is up against emptiness
for a moment or an eternity—
images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon—
is the main reason we’re on the planet.
The food’s here of the first crow to arrive,
numbers two and three at a safe distance,
then approaching the hand-created taste
of leftover coconut macaroons.
The instant sparks in the earth’s awareness.
Copyright © 2016 by Marilyn Nelson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 4, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The tree is an allusion to a poem by Rilke; the musing wonders whether it’s possible to have Gaia consciousness. I was watching crows eat the holiday leftovers I’d tossed out onto the snow. They really liked the coconut macaroons.”
—Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson
Marilyn Nelson was born in Cleveland on April 26, 1946, to Melvin M. Nelson, a U.S. serviceman in the Air Force and a member of the last class to graduate from air cadet training at Tuskegee Institute. Nelson’s mother, Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, was a teacher. Brought up first on one military base and then another, Nelson started writing while still in elementary school. She earned her BA from the University of California, Davis, and holds postgraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (MA, 1970) and the University of Minnesota (PhD, 1979).