I Think They Are Crows
About a hundred flying in the green-tinted zone
between slate sky and vanishing half-sun.
Parked cars grow black fuzz.
The world mutes.
Their flapping wings
are grand pianos falling.
My heart twists as I brace for the crash
of soundboards splintering with Beethoven, Mozart,
Gershwin, Tatum, Monk—destroyed in a final
Everything Chord.
Coyotes claw their ears.
I feel a ripple underground as I lose the last remnant
of sun. Silence blows across bruised sky and land.
For a moment, I hear inside myself—pulse drum, lung flute—
interrupted by voices: we’ll make garrotes from the strings.
Sara Backer is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Bicycle Lotus, which won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award. She’s currently an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
