Fan
This morning I shooed a crow because he was stretching
just beyond the sill which used to enclose my mint
plant wrapped in his roots in a fat glass herring jar.
I remember how, from there, he could welcome me, wilted,
when I would return from the city, as if he were ready
like I was, to already not try. He used to break out in these patches
of fuzz, which I’d wipe off every morning, and after I read
on the internet to spray him with a balm of blended garlic
I quickly minced some up and shook the slices into a bell-shaped
honey jar. I washed his leaves until he’d end up with sprinkles
of garlic decorating the tired-looking spots, which didn’t disappear
so I doused him entirely in soap. That helped for a while
before a black shade began to crawl out of his stalks
after a rainstorm, at which point I knew he was drowning
and, in the shower, pulled him from the base of his blackening body
crowning a plug of strangled roots and shook him into a tomato can
about the diameter of my hand punctured through with a knife
at the bottom, to drain between the grates of the fire escape
where he can wither in heatwaves, or dustily coo befriending
pigeons, or tip for me to right him and repack his jostled dirt.
This morning when I shooed that crow I’d only barely snuck
out of sweaty, bewildered July sleep, and if I were myself
we might've finally dwelt together: his smoldering indigo
feathers saluted the nascent flowers on the tips of a moonlit
mint plant, in a fan which was opened to all of us. The moon was waxing
and ripples of heat had just begun to pulse and tremble before the beginning.