pain falls with night
as a great and coal-pitch crow
perched within the pine tree tops
witness in the middle of it all,
an abiding wing-spread vantage
looming over the lands we created
being black as an absence in the sky

and we, we lie awake and listen to its raw cry
this joke of a songbird with tearless, obsidian eye

while somewhere not so far away
hope chatters with dawn-filled voices
dancing bright behind the wind;
a morning song of starlings
marshaled in a hidden chorus
preparing to chase away the dark,
as heralds of this new rising sun

for there is an end to every evening…