Which came first
The fog came first
long before the crows
but history -- or, if this were
a different sort of poem,
one of those pretentious poety poems,
the mists of time --
will remember the black birds
as harbingers of the
inescapable white mist that
smothered everything, deadening
the world, white-washing the landscape
until roads, houses, trees, beach, and water
were bleached into a silvery white that vanished
any horizon.
For their part
the crows were simply grounded
the distinction between air and ground
no longer finite.
To be clear
there was no murder of crows
just two, male and female,
and they were
shall we say
whiling away their downtime
by engaging in some sort of
mating dance
a precursor of Corvus copulating, no doubt
that involved much hopping, preening
and occasional pecking
not necessarily in that order.
Truth be told
as it is even here upon occasion
the rumors of harbingers started
when the raucous birds finished
their mating machinations.
A silver dollar sun strove through the haze
defining shore and sea
earth and air
the mist sending smoke signals into
a startled blue sky
and we saw it all.