looking at blackbirds

boy and crow akseli gallen-kallela

early one morning

i walked

through

a light snow falling

millions

of

little white feathers

above me

i saw two crows

sitting on a branch

looking into each other's eyes.

i watched them

looking at each other

for some time.

i thought the moment would break.

but the snowflakes fell

and a slight breeze came

and went

the three of us

remained

locked in this

strange triangle

i turned to leave

and even as i looked back

they were still lost

given over

to their love

~

a few days after this event

i was wandering through the writing of wallace stevens

and came across his work "thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird."

i've selected these six meditations from the original thirteen.

the link at the bottom will direct you to a site that has the full thirteen

if you'd like to read them.

~

i

among twenty snowy mountains,

the only moving thing

was the eye of the black bird

ii

i was of three minds,

like a tree

in which there are three blackbirds

iv

a man and a woman

are one.

a man and a woman and a blackbird

are one

v

i do not know which to prefer,

the beauty of inflections

or the beauty of innuendoes,

the blackbird whistling

or just after

xii

the river is moving.

the blackbird must be flying

xiii

it was evening all afternoon.

it was snowing

and it was going to snow

the blackbird sat

in the cedar-limbs

from thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird wallace stevens