The Crows

It was not as much the martingale as it was
the chicken we bought for the Greek diner.
All day the crows came from the trees that bent
toward their lost crowns to see and to peak
as they do. The crows rustled their feathers
(for warmth, for—territory?), seemed to have
come to a kind of resting on the window
porch. I recall the afternoons spent in the barn
in which there were no cows and no sheep,
much less a lamb to slaughter, only hays and
honeycombs stacked in boxes in rows, and outside
any day the five crows that soared and came
to rest upon the barn's grey shingle, their feathers
rustling in that way that means The wind shakes
them, the wind is strong today. The crows
like any man to whom nothing is good enough:
not that, not that, not you.