Crows
(To hear Shelley recite this poem, click here.)

Sitting again on the stoop, scooping
birdseed from the sack - hands
no longer steady - casting the feed
onto the walk, he begins the wait,
knowing the wait is part of the game,
though the game has changed since
the crows came.

Shoppers at first, just looking. So few,
he'd hardly noticed how they grew;
with an incremental vanity of caw -
their music: We are the new! Worried,
the jays and juncos flew. The crows
crowd the eucalyptus; an insolence
of chuckling as cowed orioles leave
their nests.

He sees them badly dressed, shabby
in black, their brightness confined to
the white of the lime they splash on
the walk. He wonders what prosperity
of trash has lured them to this stoop. 
Yet he sits, scooping birdseed, listening
for old music; a song he can sing to.

Fretting him the frenzied maw, the seed
consumed before it lands, the insistent
caw expressing no regard for aching
hands or missing friends. I have things
to do, he says, and wonders what they
are. He has outlived the oriole, the crow
is the new.