BLACK MAGIC

"Bad-Bad-Bad" computer hung me up for days... but here I am at last enjoying your poems and offering mine.  Looking for some fine tuning.  Does use of Marge and Terry tend to take away the universality or add to the reality...  This event actually happened, with slight modification.  Suggestions?  Dewell

BLACK MAGIC

A pair of crows strolled across
my lawn as if taking my measure
at 11:30 AM on a wintery Thursday.

A lookout perched stark still
on Marge's roof making never 
a sound; an omen, an avian

groundhog testing the calendar?
Three more crows swished in,
paced, blended with the blacktop street.

No chatter or squabbling, silent as
a tomb, 50+ more came strutting,
inspecting, gathering on Terry's lawn.

Quiet as a moonless night,
no dogs barked, no cars passed.
This Murder of crows dispersed

quickly as it had appeared.  I
stood, mouth agape, in disbelief
of their mysterious visit.

Lookout feathered a course
winking at me as he banked... somewhere.

   -Dewell H. Byrd

Dewell

Another fine poem.  I would cut the third line of first stanza and the line where the persona enters the poem in the next-to-last stanza.

I got slowed down in the -ing section of the poem.  I kept wanting chatter and squabbling to be parallel.

I think I associate the moon with magic.  Maybe the moon can be full.  I lobby for a touch of black magic to enter into the body of the poem.  For me, the poem signals death (maybe the lookout can "nevermore" make a sound) and death is not magic for me.

My favorite parts:  groundhog and winked.

Todd

I also lobby for more black magic!  Perhaps a bit of wizardry or witchery, a few runes or a touch of alchemy.

I want Murder to be lower-case, and my prejudice against ellipses continues.  I know, I know, it's a personal problem.  Still, ellipses almost always weaken a poem in my estimation.  I stuttered a moment at 50+ more.  Perhaps fifty or more?

Marge and Terry add to the enjoyment for me, the plain names against the mystery of the crows.  I agree with Todd to cut the persona in the next-to-last stanza.

I dig this poem, Dewell!

Ooops!
Title should be BLACK MYSTERY.
Now the poem makes sense.  Dewell

Well, phooey.  I want the magic back.

Dewell,

I like the solidness that comes with the names.  They don't interfere with my finding universality.

A wonderful network of death words/images: wintry, blacktop, silent as a tomb, quiet, and, of course, murder.  All of these supplement the notion of the crow/raven as the bird of death.

I found myself having to work extra to process the next to last line.  Do you sense a bit of a lexical collision there?  

At first I thought I'd recommend that the poem end with "mouth agape," but I like that notion of death winking at me and then moving on.  As if "Be back later, dude.  For now enjoy yourself."

Right on!

Markus