At the ocean, kicking up sand and singing loudly, I peer
at the trash, wondering if I should stop to clean up. I drag
across the dirty yellow sand for a trashcan. The crows
bathe in the sun. I didn’t know
crows like to sunbathe, to do anything
but grieve and die. See, this is how people lie
to us. There are no animals,
no living or dead things, who have only known
death. Even the crows skip
on sand when the waves run in, cawing, jerking
jaggedly above
the blue-grey water, their black wings disappearing into
white waves. It’s blinding,
their joy. I didn’t know
that when people say crows love
shiny things, it means they love too,
the bright sun, touched, toward which they turn their beaks
every day at 4 to watch
its doom. Perhaps this is what
grief is – to bear witness to what is beautiful in spite
of its tragedy. In the sun’s last reign, even the water
splashes like diamonds, and my voice,
high-pitched in its untrained soprano squeak,
my voice, my songs, I too, must have been
a bright shiny thing.