Blackberry

Breeze musses red-petalled poppies,
scatters clouds, insubstantial as smoke.
And see the crow, crouched over my bed
as though it has a right to be there.

Oil seeps from its feathers, greasing
the visage of a holy man across the sheets,
coveting the essence that drives me.

January blackberries have dried
to gritty clusters on branches
in the fall to winter.

They crust the bushes
like eyes of sugary crows,
sweetness and decay the essence,
fluidity absorbed into flakes
of petal skeletons that rise,
'as the crow flies,'
on the skip of breeze.