An End Near

Another morning, I am weary with teaching, weary
with the teachings of a theologian claiming God is
experienced fully only in suffering. I look beneath
cover for the prairie kingsnake I have yet to find
this year, but it’s November, and the ground is wet.
I find only a mole, scurrying blindly, an anole slow
with cold, and I make my way back to the truck, hear,
finally, the crows that have jeered this whole time.
I search for them in the high pines, and after a while,
those calling shadows lift and glide like bark broken
away from the trunks, limb to limb, passing black
across sky shattered with branches, and then the hawk,
almost certainly carrying a sack of nestling for a meal.
The crows wheel and shout, no match to circumstance,
chests so easily flayed if hawk had notion. Still, they
trail their loss, gathered not in plea but bold rebuke.
In their voices, no notes the effort is useless, no sense
they will tire, that following and lament are not enough.