A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Lull

by Patricia | 10.13.09

by Tyler Chadwick

The crow lays roadside,
fully dead, its swollen body
trimmed with grass. Its head,

cropped with beads of dew,
cocks awkwardly to one side,
the top eye muting the sky

in a flat, milky gaze, beak
cracked in perpetual “caw,”
though no sound escapes

save the rasp of leaves
tripped by the wind
through this wooded suburban lull.

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Originally published in Black Rock & Sage 9 (2009).

Tyler is a frequent contributor to Wilderness Interface Zone.  His bio plus links to his personal blog and to some of his posts at A Motley Vision can be found here (scroll to end).

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Filed under: Mormon nature literature, Nature poetry, Poetry, Submissions to WIZ, animal encounters

3 Responses to Lull

  1. karen
    October 13th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    Hi Tyler,

    This is the first poem of your’s that I have read.
    You have that nice, straight forward style of writing
    that I prefer. Your images are clear and vivid–
    it’s a nice poem. I always hate seeing injured
    or dead animals, they leave a sad impact on me
    for days.. At least this crow had a poem
    written for him.

    Karen

  2. Tyler
    October 13th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Thanks, Karen. I’m glad you enjoyed it, even though the crow is dead. Which is one reason why I wrote this, actually. I usually don’t stop to look too closely at dead animals on the road, but I’d just finished spending some time with Molly Peacock’s “The Lull” for a poetry seminar I was taking when I happened upon this sight on a morning run—and, with her speaker in mind, I just had to stop and look.

    I started the poem when I got home, patterning my language after Peacock’s, but it didn’t do much for me that day. Some months, maybe a year, later I pulled it out again and the crow was reborn. Maybe this will help it live on, like your last sentence suggests.

  3. Mark
    October 23rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    Tyler, I love how you carefully collapse the narrative distance in this poem. I feel as if I’m looking through a camera, slowly zooming in on the crow until I’m staring him in the eye. Powerful moment of meeting and realization for the reader. Nicely done.

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