K. A. Hays is the author of Dear Apocalypse (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2009) and the forthcoming Early Creatures, Native Gods (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2012).
Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2011, Beloit Poetry Journal, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and other venues. The 2011 Poet-in-Residence at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, Hays lives otherwise in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and teaches creative writing at Bucknell.
---------
Crow
In the dun stumps
of shorn corn, the soil
ice-laced, almost smeary,
a crow bobs, feasting.
Or not crow—rather
crow’s shape cut
from the rough corn field,
behind which hangs a blackness
supple and true:
a blackness that was
before crow, or field,
or I. When the shape stills,
I could climb into it;
but, not wanting now
to sleep, I let
the shape again
go crow. So the husks
keep on dropping
from the beak.
So the earth goes on urging,
in spite of it all,
a slow, brown thaw.
---------
Photo Credit—L. Weingarten