The Gape, by Jan Richman

Each crow follows the black point ahead

in the corner of his vision. This affords

him

both the arrogance of brotherhood and

the distance

to speculate on dinner. If it seems

beautiful, if it reminds you of a necklace

unlatched and flung, of the intimate

and frail order of things, that is purely

accidental. A stark, round baby

may think murderous thoughts. If to

lurk

and to reside were synonymous, we’d be

making

new mistakes instead of the same old

ones.

Often, what you think you hear

improves on

what you hear. For instance, when my

mother died,

we couldn’t close her mouth. Three of us

trying.

First with pillows, lifting and propping.

And finally, alone, I had her down,

tackled,

her whole head tucked in my arm like a

nut,

and as I wrestled and pried, imagining

the civic

clack of teeth, I thought I heard the

ocean

in that dry, ancient cave, rinsing my ear,

I thought I heard the violence of sand.

From “Because the Brain Can Be Talked Into Anything” by Jan Richman. (Louisiana: $15.95; 48 pp.) Richman lives in San Francisco. She has received many prizes, including the Nation Award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and, recently, the 1994 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. 1994 Reprinted by permission.