How Time Travel Presents a Challenge for Humans

When I have hard days I want to write as if
there are no other choices and nothing
else worthwhile in the world to do.
I mention this, then gaze up at Crow.
I’m not holding a can attached to a string
but I still feel silly, anxious. I puff out
a breath: in for a penny.

Crow closes one glossy eye.
Despite the tide and drift of ages,
holy places endure.

I tip that side to side and look
for a spillage of insight.
Nothing.

Wait. Thirty million years—that’s my
thought. That’s how long Crow’s kind
have been carrying food to ghosts,
speaking the languages of clan and kindred.
Seeding new fields, forests, fables.

My kind? Six million, give or take.
Our stories were minted yesterday
or five minutes ago, comparatively.

Crow peers down at me and I see myself
reflected: no one goes alone? Then I see
that’s not it at all.

No other creatures are deep time travelers.
Frequent out-of-now flyers. Consider the
lilies of the field, birds of the air
and all that for example. Yeah: just us
wandering around out there, haunting
the past or future, now and then getting
a loaf or a note from crows.

Too damn much time thinking about dying
and what thousand places I’m not, the
ten thousand things I’m not doing right
this minute
today.

Deep breath, nine more.

Crow stretches one wing, turns to face
the other way. Your power is finite,
but not useless.

I smile finally, and recall my clean
timeworn body to the present.

It’s a hard holy day.
I walk up the mountain
and put pen to paper.

It was in November of 2020 that I began to realize I was going to have a collection of poems about Crow.

This poem, along with the other Crow poems, subsequently made up the book  “Reflection With Crow,” which is available on Amazon.

This particular poem was first published by Anti-Heroin Chic, in February 2021. I was also the Featured Poet that month.

Click here to purchase on Amazon