Quit is the long crow’s advice.
It’s silly, after all, to dig a grave
for a turkey buzzard
when real work waits
& real funerals
& when the forest already hums
with the loam of burials,
& this bird that’s so ugly
little girls in church dresses
throw rocks at it,
this bird that eats so much
it can’t take off,
that wastes not, but wants
just one more meal
& bald & wrinkled & stiff
& lost in road sedge
& quit insists the ticking emergency blinkers
& quit insists the hard clay earth,
the earth that has always been,
of course, a grave for even birds,
for even wings,
for even evening’s
cold, severe wings.