On the day after All Souls I go
to pay my taxes. The crow
is waiting on the town hall lawn,
full of flap, shine, and sass,
immune to grievances, withdrawing
a line of sustenance from the soil.
I have already passed the graveyard,
our plot by the fence where
generations of teenagers will bounce
empties off our stone. Nothing
personal, just thinking to insult
death that way. Taxes and death
for sure, but Ben Franklin omitted
the sooty crow, its smudge
always first in the air
after a hurricane.
Trying for a social life, I chat up
the pretty town treasurer, but stick
her pen in my shirt pocket when I fail,
about as welcome as that smutty
forager on the lawn, who taught me
scavenging, and take a fistful
of complimentary peppermints,
against the time when I
will have no time.