for Ken Bolton
Ken, this is from your poem,
“Italian Chronicles─Birds of Rome”:
“A handsome kind of crow they have around here─
two-toned, black & a lighter chocolate-charcoal colour.”
The two crows in Copenhagen, near
the Little Mermaid, at a dock, feathered silver and black,
prowled water-smoothed
rocks, dipped
glinting beaks into
polluted water, and pecked at asphalt squares
the size of half a postcard. Early
morning. A swan
and cygnets lowered heads
into water, near a boat, floating
inside the almost black
reflected, elongated, triangle of a hull. I thought
of your crows, there all day and night inside
your poem, as the two here leapt
to fly
inches
above these wet, gleaming
rocks.
John Levy
(7/30/18, 1/23/22)