Ryan Harper

Crow

In my place and a little beyond

the small murder sources remains.

There are flakes of a meal 

daily on my porch table. I see

to them, the morsels strewn.

Bobbing cautious by turns under

the awning, plucking bran collecting

nuts—a bird then a bird processes,

droops to kernels, raises to transport,

to soften in the yard bath.

I love them in light movements,

like the shadows winging wild 

and watchful around my soul,

neither feeding clear of risk:

blessed bran of darkened habit,

keen to the fragments of one man

thrown a little beyond his place. 

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Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry. Some of his recent work has appeared in Kithe, Consequence, Fatal Flaw, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.