Crows crave and gather
Father abandoned his patch of ground, barren as a kiln’s brick floor.
Might as well plant rows of rust chips in coal dust, he said.
He followed stars that said water north and, finally,
settled like silt where the river widens and slows.
He planted an apple tree by our home and willows along the water.
. . .
Graveyards always occupy the land that lit no farmer’s desire.
The departed are sown under the shadows of tombstones that tilt
and slowly dissolve as the rains erase words their dead never saw.
Storms hide the stars all summer and lightning reaches down,
bores into the ground, and fuses soil, leaving behind brittle stone roots
glazed as smooth as porcelain and just as slow to grow.
As it rains, crows crave and gather rage back to their branches.
They each watch with one eye as I tend to a garden my father will never see.
Lee Potts is a poet with work in several journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Gargoyle, Ghost City Review, and Barren Magazine. He also has work forthcoming in Saint Katherine Review, 8 Poems, Sugar House Review, and Parentheses Journal . He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and his last kid still at home. He's online at leepotts.net.
