The Gathering of the Ravens

Garrulous descriptions gather
In these latter days of summer,

Meaning nothing to each other,
Masking everything they cover

In convocations of black wings.
Hidden in their conversations

A carcass starts to disappear,
And clouds like those that painters tried

Depicting, before photographs
Blanketed the land exactly,

Ride up and over the mountains,
Stately, palatial as galleons,

Ephemeral as the notion
To do something new with one's life,

As a boy sits on the shoulders
Of a man in roadside sunflowers

Watching the long train rumble by.