The Knuckle Crow

Count your fingers before you go to sleep, the knuckle crow might have stolen one.

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At twelve beneath a moonless throw

when candlelight was thin and low

I heard upon my window slow

the tapping of the Knuckle Crow.

Tap-tap, it came with patient spite

a brittle sound that split the night

like little bones in cold moonlight

all rattling in the hollow night.

I looked beyond the misted glass

where shadows moved like smoke or grass

and there, beneath the misted pane

he stood as if composed of rain.

Where hollow night had gathered thick

he clicked his beak.click-click, click-click.

His feathers flowed like funeral rain

his eyes were stars gone mad with pain

and from his beak there softly fell

a knuckle cold as midnight’s shell.

“Oh noo, craw,” he sighed,

“the night knows all

the rotten hands that hide, the hearts that fall."

Then through the floorboards, thin and slow

came voices from the earth below

they sang in tones too soft to know

“All borrowed things return to Crow.”

I tried to speak, but sound had fled

the room turned strange, the air turned black.

He tilted once his velvet head

and tapped the glass again instead.

Tap-tap, my fingers answered too

though I had not told them to.

They knocked beneath my curtains blue

as if another crow now knew.

At dawn, the room was still as snow

the candle drowned in wax below.

And on the sill, in crooked row

five pale marks from the Knuckle Crow.

Now when the rain is running slow

and branches bend their backs below

the insane children whisper low

“Count your fingers. Count the knuckles in the beak of the Crow.”

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