Where the hand-made blet of cottonwoods
meets natural, soft-fleshed catalpa,
we crouch with sandwiches and beer--
our rods leaning out over the water,
whisering into its depths.  A gust of wind
nudges the cottonwoods and I watch
their feathered seeds fall, sunlit
and glowing, into the river
as my father and grandfather lean out
and sink into story.

When Dad was young, crows
came to the county in a black storm.
They rested in the broad-leafed catalpas
the farmers used for fenceposts,
the know of a black bow tied
around the throat of corn fields,
wheat fields and gardens.

Grampa tied coffee cans--filled with old nails,
screws, adn rusted springs--like hostages
to the branches.  Dynamite 
was wired from Maxwell House to hills Brothers 
and the night cracked into light and dark
and the screaming murder of crows.

My father and uncles made coathanger loops and weaved them into the birds' mouths
(out their necks), bloodied their Keds
in a race for the nickel bounty
on each shiny black head.

Today, this is a place of light.
Escaping founders of future generations
settle on my eye-closed face.  There will be fish,
and the beer for which Im five years early
will be bittersweet cold.  We will shake off
the seeds and stories and rise up lazily,
passing in silence through these vacant gallows.