Morning braided with crow and maple tree.
The crow falls from branch to porch rail, then settles on asphalt. That decides it: we no longer need try
to know what we can’t. How far toward morning does a gold beak turn?
And if every tree is an Ur-tree?
Every tree is an Ur-tree. The wink of a crow resolves what’s true
for the morning: for the crow, the panorama shows as a tray
of perches.
Daneen Wardrop is the author of three poetry collections: The Odds of Being, Cyclorama, and Life as It, which received the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award. A fourth collection, Silk Road, will appear later this year. She has also published three books of literary criticism, including Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing (New Hampshire, 2009). She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly, FIELD, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review and elsewhere. (updated 4/2018)