Crow’s Murder

Crow felt something that wasn’t her body lift
toward the topmost boughs of the white pine,

and in this awkward rising noticed the wings
she loved and sailed upon didn’t beat anymore.

She could see her own body collapsed on the ground
in the same way she saw the image of her crow-self

flying over the lake when no wind moved the water.
A rivulet of blood formed beneath her broken wing,

and salty mucus dried under her eyes. The first bullet
shattered her keeled sternum, the second nestled

between her ribs, and the last darted through the middle
of the furculum, tearing away the pectoral’s shield, rudely

entering the heart. That third bullet departed
out the back, framing a doorway in the mantle feathers

below the nape of her neck. She felt all of this
like the sudden emptiness after an egg descends,

the tired patience of waiting in a nest for days. She knew
the boys who did this, sensed their hidden sorrow.

The kind one who came first to these woods
after the bulldozers left, after so many trees had fallen

and been hauled away. It was he who sometimes fed her
bread. And the mean one she’d seen beaten by the father

and who now used his fists to forget. And the scared one
who stole his grandfather’s twenty-two, wanting to prove

he was tough to the kids who shoved and shouted
in line for the bus. Before she let go of the branch,

she squawked in her new voice, which was softer
and sounded like water splashing against rock.

The boys, who’d taken a stick to poke at her rigid corpse,
turned toward the tree where she perched

but could not see her because she’d changed. The one
who’d fed her said he was sorry they’d done this.

And the mean one hung his head and mumbled
that none of it meant shit. And the scared one

took the gun back home and put it in the basement
where so many secrets are kept.

—Todd Davis

Originally published in Winterkill (Michigan State University Press, 2016)