Police pound on his son’s door.
They look through windows
shouting his name
again and again.
Outside the father paces
back and forth, back and forth
the lines in his face
drawn with gravity,
his lips pulled tight.
Two silent crows
land on a nearby rooftop
then fly off to the trees.
He watches absently
like we do
when something normal happens
in the middle of awful.
Later, long after
they’ve broken down the door
and found his son alive
and the ambulance comes –
long, long after
his son has recovered
and all is well again –
years later in fact,
the father will look back
on those moments of anguish
and remember the crows.
.
© 2013, 2014 Betty Hayes Albright