End of the day and it’s time to reconnoiter in the blue cedar. Six crows perch almost shoulder to shoulder. All face the same direction with the same intent—one final go at the handouts left by the next-door neighbor. Their proximity and body posture indicate intimacy. They are family. Extended this year by two members. Perhaps the extras are part of last year’s brood, not ready for life on their own. They have dropped the hierarchy of parent and offspring: those that need to be fed and those doing the feeding. There’s an absence of pleading. They are more like cohorts, co-conspirators, and ready accomplices, not to suggest any criminality. One by one they take turns sailing to the ground then leap back up to settle in place on the meeting branch.

sowing twilight
the jury finds the defendant
not guilty

Cherie Hunter Day

lives in northern California among seventeen thirsty redwoods. Her haibun and short prose have appeared in 100 Word Story, KYSO Flash, Mid-American Review, Modern Haiku, Moon City Review, and Unbroken. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and widely anthologized.

Recent anthologies include Nothing Short of 100 (Outpost 19, 2018), NOON: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019), and Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022). Her books include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle Press, 2017), and an award-winning collection of short poetry, for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017). Her latest collection, Miles Deep in a Drum Solo, is now available from Backbone Press.

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⚡ 42R Mill Street, haibun by Cherie Hunter Day which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).