How much does Death weigh?

Two crows fly
across the field
to peck insects among
the ripening tomatoes,
and I am once
again reminded
of dwindling years.
One day I will no longer
sing or dance
or write a poem
about one crow
vanishing
beyond the lilacs
and the other rising
in a slow way
over yellow coneflowers,
the weight of a chipmunk
in its beak.

Jeffrey Johannes, Port Edwards, WI is an artist and poet who has been published in Rosebud, Modern Haiku, Nimrod, and English Journal. He won the 2012 Hal Grutzmacher poetry award sponsored by Peninsula Pulse and co-edited the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter 2019 Bramble with his wife Joan.