Crow waits for what he was promised
Meanwhile his name slides into the dusk slant of light
And the children he’s never had fade against this canvas of bald trees
And fireflies dance under the war-damaged sky
As grass roils beneath the hope he says something wise
Meanwhile morning birds fill him with a sort of exhausted affection
And he thinks he hears what he wants somewhere over the next hill
Like an afterthought of horizon, like an empty house
And he wakes again and again
As him
as him
as him
That we all die before we’re finished is not
The elegy he’d hoped for
And the lie a life ends with
Flows like an ocean in his ribs
About the Author
Peter Grandbois is the author of fourteen books, the most recent of which is Domestic Bestiary. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.