Grackle Poem by Ross Cohen

Grackle,
You’ve murdered brother crow
And stolen his totem spot
Atop our local mythology.

Grackle,
Strop-beaked marauder
stepping lightly, spearing
Toads, over razor grass.

Grackle,
The cloth is seldom tossed
Over your sky; you: blind
To the dimming dark, deaf
To the silence of midnight.

You’d sing the world to sleep
If only your song-strings weren’t tuned
To cackle, to unsettle, never to soothe.

Grackle,
Pale-eyed and pupiled,
A ring of chalk light
Set in a vacant heaven,
A perpetual eclipse.

Grackle,
Dressing the boney yew tree
In blue-black leaves
That shutter in their own wind,
That shutter in their
own wind,
that shutter
in their
own wind.