I haven’t posted anything in a long while. I should really change the name of this blog, since it no lonter represents the Forum, which hasn’t met in some time and from which I resigned as president. But, I thought the following poem was beautiful. You can find it in Rattle magazine. I get daily poems from that source, which you might want to check out.

ONE FOR SORROW

by Carmel Buckingham

A crow once gifted me

pine needles tucked into a paperclip.

She left it on my windowsill, right beside

the birdfeeder. I think about love languages,

about how long it’s been since I’ve felt

the smooth warmth of another’s skin,

firm muscle wrapped around me,

heavy and solid and safe.

Did you know crows can recognize faces?

She definitely knows me, she lets me get close,

she’s brought me more gifts—a Stella Artois

bottle cap, a glittering earring, a screw head,

and a few shiny pebbles.

I stack them inside, right by the window,

so she can see that I’ve kept every one.

I wonder if she’d recognize me with a smile,

she’s never seen me like that.

Crows stay faithful to their partners

until one of them dies. I only ever see her

on her own. I wonder if she hasn’t found

her partner yet, or if she is mourning

after a lover now lost.

Crows recognize voices too, so I sing to her

when she visits. Sometimes I crack open

a pomegranate and she pecks at the arils

right in front of me. I wonder if she sees

the stones behind my window; I wonder if

she knows she’s the reason I’m still here.

She always flies away, wings black as midnight,

sails into the sky. I wonder what it is about

people like me, who love spiders and crows,

who let dandelions conquer the garden, who

keep the one-eyed teddy bear, and sand the

shattered glass.

I am a defender of all the other broken things,

unwanted things, forgotten things,

things the world finds monstrous, worthless,

things that I find kindred. She deserves

her hazelnuts, to hop from foot to foot, she

deserves to exist.

And when she brings me another stone,

gray with shimmering specs of silver,

and sets it outside of my window,

I think, maybe I deserve that too.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge