BIRDS
A 4-color reduction linocut
8" x 12" print size
11" x 15" paper size
Hand printed on BFK Rives paper
Edition: 12
Sold unframed
Price includes shipping within the U.S.
A copy of the poem will come with the print.
LUSTER
Corvus brachyrhynchos
When she comes in
for a landing,
tail fanned,
a bright band of white
bisects black feathers.
When she takes off,
the flight feathers
in her wings
flash ivory.
It’s not the glance
of sunlight off
ebony plumes.
Not the iridescence
of pitch-dark feathering
collecting and reflecting
the colors of the sky–
indigo, lavender, pearl.
She’s not a white-collared crow
blown hither from South Africa
in a cross-Atlantic gale.
No, this piebald crow
is an exotic. She flocks
with common crows
in City Park, zebra striped
in the melanin-rich murder,
an undreamed bird
in a familiar landscape.
Leslie Moore
SPIRE: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability
2023, Issue 7
RIDDLE OF THE CROW
He hops instead of flies in his odd, upright manner.
When I startle him on the path, he squawks away,
rattles impotent wings, hollow bones pocked with air.
The murder flocks to his rescue,
swoops to perch on low branches,
caw-caw-caws its tribal warnings from above.
Each morning I leave a handful of kibble
on a stump. Sometimes I catch him
feeding. If I approach, he ruffles off,
a black panic in feathers. He knows my face,
yet holds me at bay, keeps the tension
between sustenance and threat. I name him
Edward Hopper, nurture him for half a year, hope
we will ride out the winter together. But
when two feet of snow erase the stump, he’s gone.
Leslie Moore
What Rough Beasts
Littoral Books, 2021