Feather and Bone by Kathleen Williamson

Shortly after sunrise
while the sky still holds roses

crows make their clamorous
commute to the river or the parkway

or wherever they go to eat the dead
the helicopter hovers

over a home with a white
picket fence, quenched candle

in each window-boxed window
I don’t know how long it will loom

the small boy and his younger sister
have already been bagged

and removed along with their parents
the murdered and the murderer

still the helicopter rends the sky
their teachers say the boy

was named for a poet
the girl wore pigtails in her hair

I was afraid the helicopter
would be here all morning but

it has withdrawn, quick as a knife
By the parkway, the crows wait

for the circling vultures to land
and crack open the carcass

………………..

Kathleen Williamson won the runner-up prize in the SLAB Elizabeth R. Curry Poetry Contest and was a winner in the Poetry in the Pavement project in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Her work has been published in Ponder Review, Newtown Literary, The Healing Muse, Inkwell and The Westchester Review. She attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and takes classes at Sarah Lawrence College and the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center.