The Day Begins With Women

A brave concourse of crows,

asseverating something,

and beyond a clotted mess

of branch and wire begins

the thaw of darkness; light

in the standing pools of the sky.

I would not begin to say

what raw, scraped arms might circle me,

what lips might brush my ears and

tell me this or that, take up maybe

the selfsame topic that so moves the corvidary:

but I know the day begins with women

heaving red earth

and hauling themselves out of quick-dug graves.

Their skin is painted with the clay of sleep,

but their eyes are licked clean:

they glow like flaws

in the glass of old windows catching the sun.