crow

crow

She felt on the verge of vanishing

Tina Chang

by the fifth one flying in front, swooping

down from a barbed wire fence i am certain

it’s a sign, not that five is a magical number

or has any particular significance to me, four

is much more mine but today it took five to

squawk me awake so i ask—what have you

come to say, you swooping fifth crow, i know

you symbolize transformation and i’d be blind not

to see the hinge of this moment, thrown in the

deep end, i’m all sink or swim and my flailing

arms have been asking that schopenhauer

question i always found so unkind, but is 

there anything for which we are not prepared

and i guess i’d have to say no and i guess i’d

have to say does it matter because well, it’s

here and does the crow ask why or from where,

no, the crow just dives down to the uneven

sidewalk and stares, just does what she does

and now my doing seems more undoing, before

the transformation the vanishing—