The Crow’s Vision

1.

Tonight, a sporadic whisper of traffic on the horizon
seeps through the trees to mimic the sound of water.

I’ve seen dry rivers cut the land,
rush hour louder than any cataract.
I choked on their fumes and rose higher,
as my rodent brother scuttled along
new underground currents
and fed on the cities’ refuse.

Turbulent particles travelled the heavens
many times over. I’ve been tossed about
on an atmospheric rollercoaster,
feathers ceaselessly ruffled,
and died so often
it can now be safely assumed
I am immortal.

The sun has set beyond the bypass. I tuck myself in,
grab a thought by its tail feathers and soar
into another mindscape.

The first creatures to raise their heads above the waves
as the moon pulled the waters into regular motion,
and the first amphibians to crawl across the tideline:
they form a wordless recollection
lodged in the primal brain of humans,
a shadow rarely acknowledged.

Yet laying eyes on this liquid expanse, the idea
of a brine-womb sucks them in, these humans,
tugs at their mind like the hand of a child.
They yield to the longing and
flock to the beaches like seagulls to garbage,
walk their dogs on the strand,
dip their feet in the shallows,
recall a childhood holiday with colours
too bright for their adult eyes,
then hack and hew their surroundings
into a pretence of stability,
spew tons of dust and grime
and create their own cryscape.

Others weave stories into a patchwork future.
Seedlings grown from the worst of their present
joined into a landscape of dystopia
unexpectedly coherent, every aspect
taken to its logical conclusion.
Bracing becomes a habit.

They sing to the tune of Sea, Sex & Sun,
buy a week or two of simulated carelessness
by this edgeland of temporary residence:
arcade noises, children’s voices,
dogs that bark then catch a ball,
portable music blasting from boxes,
tapping feet that map this rhythm,
tinny announcement,
amped on a Tannoy,
aimed at passengers waiting.

This ground level is about to be redefined.

2.

I open one eye and nod to the deepening dusk.
Gravity pulls at my slumbering body. I tighten my grip
on the sycamore branch; my mind floods
with moving images unlike any shown on their screens.

The last train to leave pulls the storm clouds inland,
a duvet of wetness, a soft grey relief from the heat:
the sea is a shroud stretched over a not-yet-corpse.

A knoll near the beach, a buffer on the edge of
a carpark, surrounded by saltwater puddles:
eddies swirl around it, day after day,
tides encroach upon it, week after week,
erase grass and topsoil, gravel and grit,
a slow-mo tsunami that does not rest
until this diminutive rise is left
underwater to offer a distorted view
of rooftops and empty balconies.

Caravans up on the cliff shudder,
panels strain against the gales then rip and spill
a cupboard, a mattress, and tangled clothes
that swirl and flap, lift up in chaotic sequence,
until tornadoes scatter their dwellings like discarded toys.

Seagulls keep the noise volume up,
avian arguments swept to the edge
of this new soundscape of repeated crashing,
short-lived symphony of car horns
and slow fading of voices
among a jumble of two- and four-wheel vehicles,
bodyworks twisted in puddles of shattered glass.

Canned music and arcade jingles, ice cream van tunes on a loop
are a background soundtrack that no longer matches the movie—
each sound interrupted in quick succession as the power dies
and corrosion starts its slow nibble on the delicate circuitry.

Waterlogged garments glisten and cling to backs and buttocks,
three shades darker than they once were, twisted around the limbs
of these beached humans and their offspring.

Three days of calm and the odour of carrion rises on the breeze,
an airborne message addressed to my brothers inland,
bearing the promise of punctured eyeballs and ruptures paunches,
delicate cheek flesh perfectly ripe for pecking.

3.

Eyes glued shut, I sense
my siblings’ restlessness. They shift
on their branches, one after the other,
sending shivers through the bark
that reach me in waves.

The sky tears itself apart, howling.
It hammers the stones into mud
and reconfigures the land.

The aftermath is near-silence.
From on-high: a charcoal drawing,
smudged in a failed attempt at erasure.

Struck by lightning and pummelled with lava,
the Primordial Ocean gave life to a spinning rock.
Now it’s the dump at the end of time,
free to rage until it has reshaped every shore.

Colours once manufactured pale and fade
unless they’re looked after and cherished:
bleaching by sunlight means
white goes off and black turns dull
after grit, dust and ash have settled.
Seeds alight and wait for roots to grow and burrow.
uPVC forms a new stratum:

unpalatable and mould-stained.
Permutation is nigh on impossible
save through the hottest crucible.

When the final storm has died,
newly-formed lagoons remain,
corpses encased in transparency.
The flight of returning swifts reflected
in this glassy surface, their calls
pierce the silence like the sound of triumph.
The next day a dawn chorus shatters the clouds.

On these coastal hills turned into islands,
a rooftop terrace would be a quay
if there were still people to name it.

Up at 20,000 feet, the land is hemmed with moth-eaten lace,
the location of this edge dictated by tides and storm surges.
I drop and play dead for five seconds and
the frilled fractals morph into a rim of archipelagoes.