Stephen Kuusisto

Incompetencies fly like winter crows—
Slanted shadows fall early, season

of rain-to-snow, the telephone rings
with wrong numbers, calls for dead men,

I swear it's true—crows on the electric line
huddle and perform a ragged dance.

Sometimes I see the boys
of the playground, Helsinki, '59,

all of us living in a nameless world,
a gold background to our play—

really, the evident sky was all one star.