The crows on my walk build nets

from roof top to tree top in threads

of communication, each juncture a rook–

Kaww Kaww–of the arrival and departure

of my comings and goings.
They know my hair top, my face, my walk,

that I am sympathetic,

that I wouldn’t ridicule or mock

my knowledge that crows lose altitude

and are forced to glide–mid-stride–to speak,
“Here! Here!–Why don’t you know?”

and the echo call from another rook

rocking on top of a pine, “I know! I know!

Watch the jay that nests below”–a corvus cousin–
once sibling in size, now Napoleon stature,

guarding her eggs by avian jousting

with beaks, tools with which to fend, fight, and feint,

the common crow–too big to scare.
Come! Come! to the corvus court–

a study in social proximics–

where Alala stands in the middle

of a concentric circle in judgment:

the pecked of the pecking order.
Balding and scared–for what crow crime?

six surround–jump in–jump back–Kaww Kaww–

did she take a mate meant for another?
A dozen, further back–Kaww Kaww–have opinions too.

In hunger, did she eat her own eggs?

The net stretches out to twenty and more.
Was it Alala’s time to die? To be consumed

is the proper order of things. If she cannot conform,

she cannot persist with the masses in a corvus nest.
I, like Alala, refuse to conform to a social order

that eats what it doesn’t understand.