byRon Welburn
- Crows play the morning's mist
and frolic in black-fingered flightschasing and twisting to
create bold beadwork designs:harvest beltbuckles and fancydance rosettes,
sinew threads winged through yellow squash;and they use orange, green, red from maple
leaving tastes of summer and of brownto dance in the white day.
The whole world is a crow's loomthis autumn, colors given us by our mother
in the light of our father the sky.Crows swoop through our eyes
to stitch these mountains to our soulA band patterns the Mahican hills
long before the sun burns off the dew,beading more colors onto the land,
at joy calling the angles of the rain.They sing and play tag, weave,
reconnoiter, light emerging around them.Then, hungry, they'll settle along
the side of a roadfor a meal of scrambled possum,
or perhaps what's left of a friend.
© 1990 Ron Welburn. From Council Decisions, Native American Chapbook Series, American Native Press Archives, University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
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