Jennifer Barber

One day the children played in the kitchen. in the cellar. in the yard. The yard looked like a meadow. a forest. an island in the sea. The children forgot their mud cakes, swing set, sticks, when a girl taught them cat’s cradles. clay people. folded paper boats. Late afternoon, whispering, they lay in a sandbox. on the sidewalk. in the grass. Each knew the others had a mother. a father. brothers, sisters, dogs. They traded blood oaths that foretold how close. how long. at what cost.

They used to mass in the crowns of oaks on every street for blocks around but have gone elsewhere, the evening no longer gathered by their feathers but by the leaves, which blot whatever light is left to the sky. Whether we saw the crows as a barely worth mentioning image of death for the way they took over branches with perfect authority, whether, where did I hear it, their numbers were thinned by disease, nothing avails. They are missing, the crackle of wings against the weight of their flight, beaks that broke open broadcasting any scrap of news. Like our children, they carry off whole years, like the wind-borne thought of cries never welcome enough day or night in our ears.