My Poetry Year: Entry #76

In which Your Humble Blogger falls into old habits:

"The Habits of Crows"

A few turns of the calendar's pages
Are enough to bring back that sudden start:
Spring returns behind the wings of winter.
Spring returns in the dawn's lightening feathers,
In an overcoat she sheds on your porch
Just before your move to take her inside.
And like that, you find yourself indulging
In all the habits of crows: exploring
Each known thatch of the ripening valley,
Calling to each other until you fill
The branches between open arms, laughing
With only a tilt of your head. And then,
The hours break into noon, and more habit.
You smoke your cigarette into a stump,
Yet not without hope do you finish it.
You have a familiar light everywhere
The morning touched. Spring is easy to love,
Easy to remember, and the crows here,
You realize, don't leave with the winter.
That feeling of beating wings never goes
Away.

* * *

A poem that uses a couple of images I've drawn upon before: crows and the turned pages of a calendar. However, this poem started not with either of those recycled images, but with the line "You have a familiar light everywhere the morning touched." Don't know where that came from, but it's alright. The rest of it, eh. Feels a little stiff to me.