Joining the Crows
We met on the hill at midnight. A small breeze
ruffled feathers & some fireflies sparked by.
The interview was the least of it—could I identify
foes from the air, how good was I at foraging?—
but I was dazzled by vast numbers, their inky regalia.
I’d have to lead a scavenger hunt, renounce all metaphors
of flight. I promised to pitch in on what they termed
“nature’s real clean-up crew.” As to well-guarded cliffs
& roosts, hours lost to practicing rattles, which songs
& subsongs to string in rotation, I was sworn
to secrecy. But I made mistakes. Sometimes I confused
assembly calls with alarms, which led to a good dressing
down & a day spent de-grubbing tree stumps.
On neighborhood watch, I pitched myself
in a posture of threat against a hawk, & mercy was granted
when an elder spoke out about how I’d rescued
his fallen kin. I learned to look earthward, scanning
for roadkill, admiring the minty velvet of moss, slowly
perfecting my caws & clicks, but I missed
the silken fur of my cat, the human spouse I’d left behind.
Sure, I could cache, but I never could quite grow a beak.
My arms grew bloody from branches. I knew the lore
& epic tales of crows whose deeds had spread
like legend—none had borrowed wings. What
was my undoing? Distraction at our weekly conclaves?
Re-arranging coins & trinkets on the wrong lawn?
Was there some loyalty test I’d flunked, some brooch
or pendant I’d secretly pocketed for some less-than-corvid
purpose?
In the end, I was offered only
the early departure of sorry recruits. My regrets
are more than I can count. I’d learned
more about clouds than Constable, plundered
the earth for frogs & crickets, ridden the wind
beside cicadas plucked to oblivion in mid-flight—
How I wish I could have stayed in that place of astonishment.
Dragonfly or Drone
Dragonflies are the ideal insects to be used as drones, researchers say…. They could also potentially be used for surveillance—after all, who would notice an insect buzzing overhead?
– Emily Matchar, “Turning Dragonflies Into Drones,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2017
The dragonfly is all stealth motion, a gem-like
glint across a lawn,
prismatic as it skims a pond
to helicopter, hover, hold,
or take a hairpin turn. Dragonfly,
how did you dream up your kaleidoscope
of color—lustrous cyan, indigo?
Strangely radiant the jewel-tones
of your other names—
darning needle, spindle, silver pin. Global skimmer,
your non-stop tour tops the monarch’s long migration—
you mate, spar, and hunt
in flight, living in restless hunger,
no curse to cattle, far too occupied
to sew up saucy mouths or stitch back severed snakes.
The drone adopts your speedy moves,
is good for search and rescue,
gliding into buildings collapsed or booby-trapped,
expert in reconnaissance,
all gleaming metal. Has yet to learn to tumble,
twist, and right itself again. It descends into
our warzones and drops off
our deliveries, goes deep aquatic off the grids
defined by GPS. Dragonfly,
your dark wing patterns diminish by the day
while you deflect new warming trends, shed mating bling
simply to survive. Some hope to hack
your nervous system, make you a cyborg
who steers bees to pollinate…
Deep-time denizen, once your body
was the length of the human arm. Once you sailed
azure skies, passing giant dinosaurs.
Your appetite is voracious, balancing
the biome. Stay with us—
(you’ll survive us?)—iridescent and in range.
Jane Satterfield’s five poetry books include The Badass Brontës (a Diode Editions winner, 2023) and Apocalypse Mix (Autumn House Prize, 2017). Among her awards are National Endowment for the Arts and Maryland Arts Council poetry fellowships, Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and the Ledbury Poetry Festival Prize. She is a professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland.
