What Minnesota Is Poem by Aaron Rudolph

What it is, is the crows,
darker in night, lounging on branches,
moving only for the wind. From
a quarter mile away, these birds blend together
and it looks as if my six-year-old niece
colored the scene herself, lost
in her thoughts, giving too many strokes of black crayon
for each branch, each crow, neglecting the pale trunk,
the glowing moon, or the almost iridescent man
walking on a sidewalk below the tree.
His head, down and resting
on his chest (or his hands,
in an uncontrollable shake from the January chill)
isn't visible over the heavily colored crows
weighing drown branches, making no noise,
not even flying off, tired from the attention.


(published in flyway and Sacred Things (Bridge Burner's Pres,2002))