Thaw! Thaw! Thaw!
crows
When the high
Snows lie worn
To rags along
The muddy furrows,
And the frozen
Sky frays, drooping
Gray and sodden
To the ground,
The sleek crows
Appear, flying
Low across the
Threadbare meadow
To jeer at
Winter’s ruin
With their jubilant
Thaw! Thaw! Thaw!
This crow poem is different than most others I’ve read, either for children or adults. It is less concerned with Crow’s character and more concerned with what he looks like and sounds like.
The scene is late winter, with the white of “high / Snows.” We also get the implied gray-brown of “muddy furrows” and the gray-white of “frozen / Sky frays, drooping / Gray.” Amid all the colorless neutrality of the landscape, there are crows, “sleek” and black, “flying / Low” and jeering.
Of course they are jeering. What did you expect? A blessing?
The last line is a play on what crows say: caw! In this poem they’re saying, Thaw! And though it’s a jeer, it’s a “jubilant” one. And in late winter, when we are tired of “ruin” and ready for spring, we can have that same urge to jeer at the weather.
Why not join the crows and make a joyful noise.
