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Column 182

The Crow

Intro by Ted Kooser
09.24.2008

Poet­ry has often served to remind us to look more close­ly, to see what may have been at first over­looked. Today’s poem is by Kaelum Poul­son of Wash­ing­ton state. A mid­dle school stu­dent and already accom­plished mak­er of poems, he writes of the thank­less toils of an unlike­ly but entire­ly nec­es­sary mem­ber of our com­mu­ni­tythe crow!

The Crow

So beautiful
but often unseen
a maid of nature
the street cleaner that’s everywhere
never thanked
never liked
always ignored
so elegant in a way no one sees
but without it we would
be in trash up to our knees
with the heart of a lion
the mind of a fox
the color of the night sky
a crow
the unpaid workman
that helps in every way
each and every day

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from “The Universal Controversial Hive: poems, stories, & memoirs by students,” Writers in the Schools, 2006, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.