Dropping sticks is a game
the summer crows have learned to
play, flying from May
to September, one above the other.
The higher lets his toy fall through the
air to the other of the pair,
who returns the favor. We gulp
to see these evening acrobats climb so
high, printed black against the sky
above the blacker hills.
They become absorbed in their little
game. It seems so tame:
one drops a stick, the other catches it,
what more is there to
say? Just that every day
my heart drops with it
through the empty air, till a strange
and gay and capricious bird, unknown to
me, catches that heart, and it soars again.
“Dropping Sticks,’’ by Frank Robinson, an Ithaca, N.Y.-based poet, art historian and a former director of the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design
“American Crow,’’ by John Jacob Audubon
