"the shifty epitome of pure swagger..."

Crows
by George Garrett

Lord, but I do dearly love
these, your large, slow reedy messengers,
your spies clad in shiny feathers,
sentinels of high places squawking
and cawing arrivals and departures,
raggedy fliers rising in a black caucus
or, grounded, the shifty epitome
of pure swagger and bravado.
Old crows, noisy flock,
we came through bad weather together
when all the trees were a cruel glitter
of ice and earth was a hard-hearted stranger
who wished only catastrophe upon us,
you and I, shabby and insufferably proud,
perched here to witness the robins' return.


Rooks have returned, Aleksey Savrasov, 1871