it wanted sun, rain,
and earth to break open.
Crows live in the heart
of the forest. They want the trees
to go back to seed.
Crow’s dark life
the color of night
is stored sun,
grain
full of summer.
It lives like we live
off those before us,
those living in clay
whose bones survive
like broken pots
of tribes
that were here before our tribes,
that were here before the Americans
from broken worlds.
It is the breaking
that keeps going on.
There is no escaping the breaking
morning,
the tear in night
or a shell
life crawled out of
looking for the next world.
Tonight chickens sleep.
Dishes crack like a country
with its politics.
Even the polling booths at the drugstore
are broken.
Barns collapse like a house of cards
with a deuce too many.
Tonight in farmhouses
people sleep
beneath quilts
the mothers made
even with heartaches
and beneath them and their slatted beds
and floors with splintered wood,
the tribes
and songs of iron
are ringing earth, wake up.
In the dark field
yellow squash is growing,
bones are filling up the arms
with new life,
gourds are climbing fences.