A murder of crows carves circles
in the sky, assails with a raucous riot.
What synapses are firing
in these corvid brains,
able to plan, fashion tools,
learn and remember?
Am I the cause of this commotion?
What do they think of these
two-legged creatures that do
such unnatural things?
Folklore holds that crows
hold trials of wayward members
of the flock, punish a crow
for crimes such as stealing
food from a younger bird.
What would we tell them
if called to explain ourselves?
Would we apologize
for the messes we have made?
Would we be sheepish
or defiant? Or offer
excuses, as if ignorance
or necessity could justify
the rising seas, the continents
ablaze, the species gone extinct?
I can see the presiding judge
robed in black feathers,
his beaky face stern, myself
cowering in the defendant’s box.
How can the verdict be anything
but guilty, the sentence
anything but a lifetime
of watching the planet
we call home hurl toward
the fate we’ve created?
