Augury crow

· by · in dVerse, poetry, the aged librarian. ·

One morning in September
the augury crow was silent
as if wordlessly saying
something crucially essential.

He was perched on the sil
of the third window
counting from the northeast
corner of the library.

The librarian’s heartbeat
rose as behind the black
curtains of that window was
a sealed room of ancient scrolls.

He unlocked the doors
to see what the crow had seen,
It have once been told,
that silence of the crows

would mean the lifting of veils
and deciphering of codes
would untangle words
revealing vellum secrets

in manuscripts hidden in
the shelves where secrets die,
but as he entered the room,
three times the crow cawed.

So, despite the signs, the stars
aligned, the windblown tales
would stay within the shadows
until again the crow stay silent.

Crow On Screen
Jan Mankes

Today Lisa hosts dVerse Poetics with a prompt about Semiotics, or signs. We can do it in many ways, maybe we have received a sign ourselves, or we can take a myth or even as I tried to do, write a poem from our own fantasy.

September 12, 2023

25 responses to “Augury crow”

  1. I love the ominous feel of this and the details of the color black sand the number three. And I like how the universe seems to conspire to keep its secrets hidden in that room in the library at the end.

  2. I was very tempted to write a poem about crows, but I changed my mind. I love your augury crow haunting the aged librarian, Björn, which reminds me a tiny bit of Poe’s raven. I smiled at the lines:
    ‘the augury crow was silent
    as if wordlessly saying
    something crucially essential’
    and was intrigued by the sealed room of ancient scrolls and the crow cawing three times. And yes, the library is an apt place for signs and omens.

  3. Bjorn, you have tingles crawling up my scalp with your poem. If you have the esoteric training you can tap in to the signs that swirl around us. In your fantasy, The Aged Librarian clearly is. Excellent spell-weaving.

  16. Yes, Bjorn, the birds have it. Like a weather forecaster, each has a different message. I’ll take the mockingbird, they are smart enough to mimic me with a morning song. Good news has been forecast from roof top to roof top.
    ..

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