Doris Lynch
Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Interlude

December’s a kind of waiting. The interstice between breathing in and out, a caesura, a long pause. At night the stars offer brilliance and motion (slow revolutions across the clear sky), but during the short days we watch the tree limbs sway, as the north wind rustles their last leaves away. We hope that the cold, half-frozen ground will accept the bounty of sweet gum and conifer.

At five o’clock the crows arrive in large numbers, gliding and turning en masse. Finished marauding the town fields and campus meadows, they gurgle and rasp, caw and shout, then fold their wings and land one by one, close to each other on the tall sycamores and pines backlit by twilight.

seeking warmth
from the murder’s body
winter crows