The Crow Knows

The crow on the parking lot light
runs a small business nobody hired him for.

Six mornings now,
same silver Honda,
same woman,
same tired blinking start.

He clocks the drive-through run at 2 a.m.
He clocks the crying before her shift.
He clocks the mirror check, quick and small,
like she's on trial in her own front seat.

Crows don't judge.

That's the rumor, anyway.

They remember.

Every face.
Every slight.

Scientists have the evidence.
They can teach their young
which faces to distrust,
pass an old grievance
from one generation
to the next.

A whole small war
passed beak to beak
over some forgotten, ordinary wrong.

I like to think
one keeps a file on me.

Watches me take the trash out in my socks.
Watches me talk to plants
as though they might vote
in my defense
if it ever came to that.

Maybe he knows
which mornings I am pretending.

Maybe he knows
which ones I am not.

And when I go,
no ceremony,
no fuss,

I like to think
he'll mention it in passing.

Not grief.

Just bookkeeping.

One less window
on his route to check.

Still, some morning,
out of habit,
he'll land on that same ledge again,

find someone new
behind the glass,

and sit there
a second longer
than he should.

Not sad.

Just recalculating.

The exact shape
of a story
where someone used to be.

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