Crows ca. 2001

Waiting for the phone to ring
from someone who'll hire me
or my lover who hung up on me
last night, I walk to the store
to buy aspirin for my head.

I smoked too many cigars
reading the newspapers
and worrying the crossword puzzle.
The Spring sun melts snow drifts
and rivers gush down the street,
undercutting dirty snow and ice
and funneling into sewer grates
and manhole covers. In the driveway

at the gasamat, a man
in a Vikings jacket
stands beside his bike, oblivious
to me. I'm ready to avert my eyes
if he looks but he doesn't,
attending to nothing
in particular that I can see.
He's Indian, maybe homeless.

I buy bottled tea
in the store and Rolaids.
They don't have the big
bottle of aspirin I need.

He's still there when I leave,
and he looks up this time when I step on
the plastic insides of a cookie bag.
When I turn the corner
onto the street he caws
and laughs like a crow. Then I hear
them all around me rattling the air,
and I think how I heard them at dawn
before the sun came through
the window. I'm happy I saw him.

The trickster
is always the first
to sound a raucous rattle
at anxiety, and make
us laugh at vanity
and the farce of security.

(c) 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.

submitted as part of a prompt at MagpieTales.com