Then, a Thousand Crows

Today when I framed
two crows
in the notch of the ash tree,

I thought of order.
Rain
was in the forecast

and presto, rain. Then
three crows
in the field tilted the world

as if imbalance were
a blessing
dropped in the cup I keep

for blessings. Then
four crows
in the grass, five

on the wire, my plate
heaped up
with six crows.

And to give thanks,
to tell God
six crows were enough,

I lit prayer papers
in the garden --
their orange slippers,

their black, abstract
petals like
anti-confetti, like

hopeful ash, like
a thousand crows.
Then, a thousand crows.

I thought in the garden today
I'd reached the age of forgetting,
that country where I could live
passively, from now on,
in a rented house by the lake,
a rowboat in the basement.
My only job would be
to not remember so slowly
that I become immortal,
disappearing like radium,
half-life after half-life,
dividing forever until
I'm like the seasons,
neutral and cyclical --
like spring unconsciously
putting on its clothes,
becoming less myself
and more like my aunt,
summer-dressed and jovial.
How bad could that be?
But her memories die by clumps
and regions, by fields
and whole cities and dairy herds.
I barely remember her kitchen
where we sat before the wedding.
Out the window -- what was there?
A garden, a field? We drank coffee,
and talked, but what about?
I thought today I'd reached the age
where only the present mattered,
but for that I'd need to be
my uncle, who dresses her
carefully, corrals her at night,
remembering for both of them
all the terrible moments
of weeds and chores,
summers and flood and touch.