The Other Genesis What do we see outside except a canopy of ebony wings, garlands of feathery smoke moving on blackened water? Against the sketchy light it looks like a cancer patient showing us their fifth x-ray. The troubled lungs, highlighted: a cage of full-grown crows in a space too small for them and anxious for routes to escape, fanning their jittery wings against imprisoning walls. Something screamed in fear, locked inside us, watching. Resistance is useless, absurd, trapped in something we are. We saw their work when free: the substantial killing along the state route. They strutted around the roadkill, plucking at bits of the dying creatures, supple as the playful light. When will it end? we ask. And why did it ever begin? We are the understanding they lack. So we took them deep inside us.
About the Author: Royal Rhodes, who was trained in the Classics, is a retired educator who taught classes in global religions and Death & Dying for almost forty years. His poems have appeared in: Ekstasis Poetry, Snakeskin Poetry, The Montreal Review, The Cafe Review, and other places. His poetry/art collaborations have been published with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.
Image Credit: Image originally from British Ornithology: Norwich: Bacon,1815-22. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
As It Ought To Be 