This one's for Nancy

So long time reader Nancy invited me to join her Facebook group, Cunning Poets Society. I've been known to scribble a poem now and then, so I joined up. Now I'm a cunning poet, I guess.

Anyway, the problem is, I don't write much poetry these days. But that's not a good thing, thinks I. How about I write one poem a month, thinks I. Each one named for the month in which it was written. That shouldn't be too difficult. Well, okay then. So I sat in Starbucks on a sleety evening, waiting for a bus, and wrote "January, 2010."

1.

Maybe I'll never forget
all that stinging sleet on the 20th,
as I walked up Forest Ave,
having missed my bus,
and then all those crows by the hundreds
(by the thousands, surely), eager
and silent in crowding flight,
on their way to realms unknown,
dimming the wintry sky.

2.

Or the afternoon of the 14th,
and the taloned predator, new
to our suburban neighborhood:
may I never fail to remember
its slow imperturbable gliding
on broad white efficient wings--
and the crows (again the crows)
all in a mid-air uproar, circling and diving
as the ever-unhastening hawk
glides calmly through
their spiraling riot.