What's in a Name?

I really don't like the "murder of crows" designation.
How about:

A raucous of crows
A road block of crows
A nightfall of crows
A guffaw of crows
A gleaning of crows
A pulse of crows
A wave of crows
A contemplation of crows
A tide of crows
A furlong of crows
A commute of crows...?

Their Own Wise Ways

My million year old gut
Loves the feeling
Safe, seemingly, in my house
A thousand years of technology in the making
Protecting me
From the wind wild
The elemental weather,
Billions of years in the coming
A creation of sun and water and air
Chaotic as it flaunts and flails
Randomly demonstrating and demanding.
I would not want to be a Chickadee on this day
Clinging to a tree.
But they have their own wise ways
And likely a rising in their guts too,
Now don’t they?

Hair Falls

When the last hair falls,
Will Jim rise up from the grave and walk the avenues of Paris?

When the last hair drops,
Will Pearl strut the streets of Texas with a bottle of Southern Comfort
Tucked in the waistband of her bell bottoms?

When the last hair swirls in the drain,
Will Jimi haunt the night electric down at the crossroads?

When the last hair blows,
Will John still imagine a time when we give peace a chance?

When the last hair falls,
Will there be another to take its place?

The Enemy

Ok, let's declare the winners:
Our side or your side
We're the best
We have the biggest and most
Pat ourselves upon the back
And now turn to the work
And deal with the rest.

Our GNP has a cost
Our cars and food and toys
   have an expense
Cheap things
   aren't cheap.

Our standard of living
   isn't standard.

Ill-begotten
   we compete
   we defeat
   they retreat.

Poor and getting poorer
   sick and getting sicker
   we bring them war
   and leave them in pollution
Angry
Fed-up, but not fed.

Yes, we win
We are fat
They are thin.
But they deserve it
Because they are the enemy
And we fear them.

Act Two

Now I have found two of you
Or at least you have shown yourselves…
Like in the second act of a play or pageant
Acted out in the hot days of summer.
And the second act is full of dialog:
A discussion back and forth
A call and response chorus
Of an operetta,
For I hear the music
But do not speak the language.
But by the staging and the costuming I can infer
That perhaps you are parent and child
In the throes of avian adolescents
Working out the final solution whereby wings
Flap and you separate
Both greater for it?
Or maybe you are siblings and squabbling
Over turf or food or the keys to the coming kingdom?
Pleasantly distracted by the drama,
I am keeping my ears keen and my eyes
To the sky.

Calls and Tokens

It is tomato season.
Vines are pendulous with fruit
Colored like the margin of a rosy sunrise
Crowning above a forest canopy.
It is an expectant time.
Overhead you continue to call out.
-It has been several weeks now-
You give out a two note crescendo
A half-step up
Sounding like it is issued from a rusty slide-whistle,
A squeaky garden gate,
Not songful
Just barely an exhale.
Who do you seek?
And what do you want?
You are young perhaps
Needing to let go, but fledged forlorn,
Willfully abandoned and sent on your way…
You glide across a sky light
And then perch, showing yourself.
I raise my hands full of tomatoes
And offer them in a fruitless gesture:
I am with you
But I cannot come to your aid.