The Crow

The Crow: A poem by Jack Arnett.

I.

Before the first plank kissed the marsh,

before the first bell learned to ring fear into morning,

before the first whitewashed prayerhouse

nailed its clean hands to the sky,

I was already there

older than the oldest lie men tell themselves

to sleep without listening.

I am the black witness.

The hinge of dusk.

The feathered yes and no.

Call me Crow, if your mouth is simple.

Call me omen, if your heart is guilty.

Call me the trick that the world plays on the proud,

if you have the patience to taste truth.

I wore many names

when the forests were uncut scripture

when rivers still spoke in full sentences

and stone knew how to remember.

The people of salt-wind and cedar

knew the syllables that fit my shadow.

They knew how to read the angle of a wing

as easily as you read a door left open.

I am mischief.

I am warning.

I am the god who does not beg.

I leave signs

and let men hang themselves

from the ropes they braid out of certainty.

Roanoke

you built your little square of order

like a lantern set on a bog.

You set your faith like a nail

and called the night “wicked”

because it would not obey.

So I perched above your roofs,

the dark bead of my eye

collecting every human spark,

every small cruelty,

every soft sigh of love

that dared to breathe without permission.

II.

There is a game the divine plays

when it grows bored of perfect light.

Not a game of dice,

not a game of cards

a game of souls,

a game of whispers,

a game of “who will believe the first lie.”

The Devil loves games.

He is not always a horned thing with smoke for breath.

Sometimes he is only a suggestion

in a girl’s ear.

Sometimes he is a grin

behind a hymn.

He came to your village

like a cold thread sliding under a door.

No footprints.

No sound.

Only a change in faces:

a narrowing of eyes,

the quickening of rumors

like rats feeling fire.

He found your youth first

not because they were evil,

but because they were tender,

and tenderness is easily bruised into malice.

He called them the daughters of Kane,

as though naming them

made them holy in their hunger.

Not Cain

not the old, blood-handed brother alone,

but Kane, the sharpened idea of him:

the one who kills

and calls it righteousness.

“Look,” he told them,

“she is different.”

And difference, in a frightened place,

is a torch waiting for oil.

III.

The girl was not a witch.

No crow needs to swear that;

even my mischief does not lie about innocence.

She was only a woman

with hands that loved the earth.

She gathered berries with reverence.

She knew which bark cooled a fever.

She knew how to laugh

without seeking permission.

She met her lover where the woods grow thick

where the trees braid their shadows

and the moon can’t choose

whether to bless or accuse.

Their love was quiet,

and quiet things make loud enemies.

He kissed her palms

as if apologizing

to every scar the world had offered her.

She pressed her forehead to his

and promised

as lovers do,

as doomed lovers always do

that the storm would pass.

But storms do not pass

when the Devil is their weatherman.

I watched them from the boughs

like a secret the forest kept.

I watched the way his eyes

tried to hold her

as if love could be a wall.

I watched the way her smile

hid fear

like a candle hidden in a sleeve.

I wanted to save them

not because gods are merciful,

but because tragedy is lazy,

and I prefer a clever ending.

So I spoke in omens.

IV.

The first omen was simple.

A crow feather

perfect, unbroken

fell between their feet

as they met in the moonlight,

as if the night itself

had plucked a word from my wing

and laid it down.

He stared at it

like it was nothing.

She lifted it

and shivered.

“Birds shed,” he said.

“A feather is only a feather.”

Ah, human.

You think nature is always accidental

because you have forgotten

how to listen.

The second omen was sharper.

I flew low over the village well

at dawn

my shadow crossing water

like ink over a page

and the bucket rope snapped

with a sound like a neck giving up.

The women gasped.

The men muttered.

The minister frowned

as if the sky itself

had misbehaved.

But no one asked what it meant.

No one asked what the forest knew.

They only tightened their prayers

and called it protection.

The third omen was blood.

A fox came limping into town,

one eye milk-white,

its flank torn open,

and lay down at the edge of the square

as if offering itself

to be read.

The daughters of Kane

laughed nervously.

One of them threw a stone.

The fox dragged itself away,

leaving a thin red line

like a signature.

I tried again:

A candle in the church

burned blue and hissed,

though no wind touched it.

A bell tolled once

with no hand pulling rope.

A child woke screaming

that a black bird

had spoken their name.

The village called these “strange.”

They called them “coincidence.”

They called them “the devil’s tricks”

and never thought

to ask which devil

was already inside their mouths.

V.

The Devil, pleased,

sat in the rafters of gossip

and played his invisible fiddle.

He taught the girls their lines.

He taught them to tremble

at the right moment.

To convulse

like puppets yanked by scripture.

To speak in tangled tongues

that sounded like prophecy

to the frightened.

He taught them to accuse

as if accusation

was a form of prayer.

“Say she met the dark one,” he breathed.

“Say she walked with sin

like a lover.”

And jealousy

that old, faithful tinder

caught fire.

One girl wanted the lover’s eyes.

One girl wanted the woman’s freedom.

One girl wanted to be seen

by a village that only noticed

blood and scandal.

So they painted her with their envy

and called it truth.

And truth, in a fearful town,

is merely the loudest chant.

VI.

The minister believed he was a shepherd.

But shepherds sometimes love wolves

more than they love sheep,

because wolves make sermons feel necessary.

He took the rumor like a sacrament.

He tasted the hysteria

and called it revelation.

He spoke of the Morning Star

as if naming him

kept him outside the door.

Yet I saw it—

the Devil’s thin smile

in the minister’s certainty,

the way his eyes lit

with the thrill of punishment.

The trial was not a trial.

It was a play

performed for a hungry crowd.

The woman stood

with ash already imagined on her skin.

The lover tried to speak,

but his voice was drowned

beneath the rising sea of “WITCH!”

They brought forward the daughters of Kane,

and the Devil braided their hair

with invisible fingers.

They screamed.

They pointed.

They shook

as if the truth were a poison inside them.

And the village, relieved,

found a single body

to carry all their sins.

How easy it is

to make one woman

a scapegoat for a whole town’s rot.

VII.

That night, the moon was a pale coin

held in the fist of cloud.

They built the pyre on the hill

as if they were building a ladder

to heaven.

Dry wood.

Oil-soaked rags.

A crucifix tossed near the base

like a spell against doubt.

The woman’s mother wailed

not pretty, not poetic

the raw animal sound

of a world breaking

and knowing it cannot be mended.

The lover fought like a man

trying to wrestle a river.

He was held back

by neighbors who once shared salt with him,

now eager to prove

they were not next.

I circled overhead,

wings cutting the air

into warning.

I landed on the minister’s shoulder

for one brief, holy second.

He flinched

and for an instant

I felt his fear

like a lantern shaking.

I leaned close,

and in the language of omen

I offered him a last chance.

But he spat a prayer

and shoved me away

as if I were dirt.

So be it.

The torch touched the kindling,

and the fire drank.

VIII.

Listen—

fire is not merely fire.

Fire is a mouth.

Fire is a god

that does not care

what name you shout.

The flames climbed her dress

like hungry scripture.

They licked her hair,

they kissed her ribs,

they learned her shape by heart.

She did not scream at first.

She stared at the lover

through a veil of heat

and mouthed words

so small they could have been a blessing:

I love you forever.

That sentence—

simple, human—

was the most sacred thing

spoken in that village all year.

But sacredness does not stop wood from burning.

The crowd chanted.

They called themselves righteous

while their eyes shone

with the fever of violence.

The daughters of Kane

twisted and shrieked

as though the sight of innocence

being destroyed

was a delicious hymn.

And the Devil—

oh, the Devil was there—

not in flames, not in thunder,

but in the satisfaction

that moved through the crowd

like wine.

He looked up at me

and spoke without sound:

They are only fools.

IX.

The next morning

Roanoke woke

as if nothing had changed.

That is the cruelty of humanity:

to commit horror

and still expect breakfast.

Yet the air was different.

Even the sunlight

felt like it had learned shame.

The well water tasted metallic.

Cows refused to cross the hill.

Children drew crows in ash

and would not say why.

I left omens everywhere—

more furious now,

less patient.

A dead fish in a rain barrel.

A swarm of flies

spelling circles around the church door.

A single black rose

blooming out of season

beside the pyre’s cold bones.

But the daughters of Kane

were drunk on the power of being believed.

Now every cough

was possession.

Every argument

was witchcraft.

Every bruise

was the Devil’s fingerprint.

Neighbor turned on neighbor

as easily as a page turning in wind.

A woman accused her sister

over a shared loaf of bread.

A man accused his friend

because his crops failed.

A child accused his own mother

because fear wants company.

And the minister—

terrified of losing the flame he’d lit—

kept feeding it wood.

The divine game escalated.

The Devil’s board filled with pieces:

souls moved like pawns,

shoved into corners of guilt,

sacrificed for the spectacle.

I watched.

I mourned.

I laughed once, bitterly—

because my nature is trickster,

and even sorrow

has sharp edges.

X.

Beyond the village,

in the tree-line,

the people of the nearby waters

watched in silence.

They did not step into the square.

They did not offer themselves

to your madness.

They read my flight

and understood.

They knew the old agreement:

when Crow circles low

and calls without sound,

when the fox limps into town,

when the river runs dark—

you do not ignore it.

They held their children close.

They stayed with the woods.

They waited for the fever to burn itself out.

They did not fear witches.

They feared fear.

They did not fear the Devil’s name.

They feared the way humans

use holy words

to sharpen knives.

So they remained hidden,

eyes like coals in leaves,

and their silence was not cowardice—

it was wisdom.

XI.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

Roanoke grew thinner.

Not from hunger alone—

from suspicion,

from sleeplessness,

from the weight of imagined demons.

The daughters of Kane

began to accuse even one another.

That is the Devil’s favorite joke:

to let his instruments

devour themselves.

The minister’s sermons

became harsher,

less about grace,

more about purging.

The lover—

the one who had held her at midnight—

wandered like a ghost

that could not die.

He spoke her name to empty rooms.

He left food at the forest edge

as if love could still bargain.

I perched above him once,

and dropped a feather

into his open palm.

He stared at it, finally understanding

that a feather is never only a feather.

He looked up.

His eyes—

ruined by grief—

found mine.

“What did you try to tell us?”

he whispered to the air.

I answered

with the only mercy I own:

another omen.

A trail in the dirt

leading away from the village,

toward the island wind,

toward the water line,

toward the people

who still listened.

XII.

At last,

the final survivors saw it.

Not all at once—

humans are slow to admit

they were wrong—

but in pieces:

A woman remembered the blue flame.

A man remembered the snapped rope.

A child remembered the bell ringing alone.

The lover remembered the feather—

and the fox’s blood-line signature.

They gathered in the wreck of the square

with eyes like emptied cups.

“Draw the crow near,” one said,

voice shaking.

“Ask it.

Ask it what we refused to learn.”

They laid bread on a stump.

They placed a bowl of water

as if offering apology to the sky.

They spoke softly now,

as though volume had finally failed them.

I came down from the roofbeam

and landed among them

because the game had reached its cruel punchline,

and even I—

mischief incarnate—

felt the heaviness of it.

They stared at me

as if looking at judgment

in feathered form.

The lover stepped forward,

hands open,

empty of weapons,

full of regret.

“What is the word?” he asked.

“What is the warning?”

My throat clicked.

My eye held the moon.

My wings folded like dark scripture.

And I gave them

the sound that had haunted the edge of their history—

the syllable that means

go where the wise are

and leave the madness behind

and also

remember what you did.

I spoke it not as spell,

but as scar:

Croatoan.

XIII.

The word struck them

like cold water.

Some fell to their knees.

Some wept.

Some stared toward the forest

as if it were the only church left.

They understood, too late,

that the warning had been there all along—

in the way the woods withheld its welcome,

in the way the animals fled,

in the way my shadow kept circling their sins.

They fled Roanoke

as if running from fire

that had learned to walk.

Behind them,

the village collapsed inward

like a mouth closing.

The daughters of Kane

ran screaming through the ruins,

still accusing, still possessed

by the power of being believed—

until belief turned on them

and swallowed them whole.

The Devil, bored now,

slipped away

to find another town

with dry wood hearts

and a minister hungry for thunder.

The nearby people remained in the trees,

silent as old stone,

watching the last torchlight die.

And one man—

the last to leave—

took a blade

and carved a message for the future.

Not a prayer.

Not a hymn.

A warning, plain and pagan:

HEED THE CROW.

LISTEN FOR OMENS.

THE DEVIL WHISPERS THROUGH JEALOUSY.

THE DAUGHTERS OF KANE WILL BURN YOU ALL.

GO TO—

But panic is messy.

And fear has hands.

Others—

still half-mad, still clinging to “purity”—

scraped the words away,

as if erasing ink

could erase guilt.

They left only the one word

they could not fully understand,

the one word that tasted like the forest’s truth,

the one word that would outlive them

like a bone in the sand:

CROATOAN.

So the empty place remained—

a hollowed mouth of history—

and centuries later

you would still ask

what it meant,

as if meaning were a lantern

you could hold without burning.

I am still here.

I still perch on the edges of towns

that mistake fear for holiness.

I still drop feathers

into unheeding hands.

And sometimes,

when the wind is right,

when the moon is thin as a knife,

when jealousy begins to sing again

in the throats of the young—

you will hear my ancient voice

carried through the pines like ash:

Croatoan.

Not a curse.

A warning.

Not a spell.

A mirror.

And if you listen—

if you truly listen—

you will hear the second sentence

beneath the word:

Do not burn what you do not understand.

Do not call hatred holy.

Do not mistake the Devil’s game for God’s will.

But humans,

so often,

prefer fire.