In another life I was a hermit.
A mountain man, 
my only company the crows. 
They shared my hungers 
and kept my secrets. 
They scrubbed the afternoons 
with their cries. 

Passersby kept their distance. 
Not that anyone could blame them—
my gnarly face and deep-set eyes
brimming with bad weather. 

How could they know 
such a rag of a body 
could carry a heart 
spun of glass?

There was a girl in the village,
warm as an oil lamp, eyes brown 
as rain-drenched dirt. 

But she never came to know 
my love—no matter how many notes
I sent from the hills,
in the mouths of crows.