Eric Sean Rawson, Single Tree (photograph)
In the first act of the Anthropocene,
a murder of crows
colors the olive tree
black as widows in a Greek tragedy.
Cursed with that raspy, hideous caw
and a history of intuition,
they lift and scatter as one,
tithing feathers and twigs,
shadow babies left behind writhing
on the flagstone.
Entropy
exacts all manner of atonement,
even the sky recedes in the
shape of an exponential function,
heat longing for something else.
Chaos rises,
the final relic of our creation,
brief and violent as art.
Let it be radiant. Let it be alive.
Give it sharp white teeth.