Funeral

One evening
when we could still sit outside
the crows came cawing overhead
for their crepuscular migration 
and the sun caught 
the shine under their wings
in their flight
they were streaked with light.
 
Now the air smells 
of a different murder.
Not death.
Not the fleshy rot of a body in a forest
nourishing the trees.
The acrid scent of industry—
the effluent of processes 
choking the possibility 
of life. 
 
Still the crows come
cawing in the evenings
black against the smoke
like noisy ashes.
They have nowhere else to go.
No instinct to burrow.
No mask to fit between 
small lungs and the poison air.
And so, already hoarse, they cry.
It sounds like the word I have been searching for—
the crash of rage and grief.