I Tell My Friend I’ve Been Feeding the Crows by Todd Dillard

"I hate the math that tallies up the good I try to do."

I Tell My Friend I’ve Been Feeding the Crows
by Todd Dillard

and he tells me that’s how kindness kills,
that by giving them food they'll forget
how to be crows, how to forage, survive,
and not for the first time I marvel at how friendly
failure is, pulling up a chair at the table
and asking for a plate after I carbonize the chicken,
tittering “love me, love me not” with the petal
confetti when I drive the mower across the flower bed. 
I hate the math that tallies up the good I try to do 
and subtracts 10,000 black feathers. But then 
it’s summer, and the sun is a bowling ball
rolling down the nape of my neck, 
and I don’t hear them like I normally do: 
the robins chucking YO MAMA jokes
through every noon-licked dogwood bough,
car alarms unfurling from mockingbird throats,
crows cawing ALL CLEAR across cedar tops. 
I step outside and the grass beneath my feet 
crunches like a cough, and in that moment 
I forget how to be a human 
who answers, What can you do? with nothing. 
Look at how alive these birds are 
splashing in my toddler's just-filled water table. 
What else, as you kill it, sings.

First published in Barrelhouse Issue 26