Casey Killingsworth has work in The American Journal of Poetry, Kimera, Spindrift, Rain, Slightly West, Timberline Review, COG, Common Ground Review, Typehouse,  Bangalore Review, Two Thirds North, and other journals. His book of poems, A Handbook for Water, was published by Cranberry Press in 1995. As well he has a book on the poetry of Langston Hughes, The Black and Blue Collar Blues (VDM, 2008). Casey has a Master’s degree from Reed College.

Crow spreads his wings

This Indian man is instructing us
about the ways of a native dance,
with illustrations and young people
regaled in their finest beaded clothing
and they sing and pound drums
and the dancers move in ways I have
never seen and the music is notes

I have never heard, like the sound 
creek water makes hitting stones under 
a distant crow. The man introduces 
a new dance and he calls the dancer 
by the wrong name and his young 
daughter laughs at him just exactly 
the way my daughter laughs at me. 

A million crows fly over the world
and if we look up we will see a million
silhouettes, each one as different
as Gene Kelly is to these dancers, 
but a daughter’s laugh, that,
that sting of wrath wrapped inside
the music of a child’s delight, I
think that’s the same sound 
no matter what dance you do,
no matter what creek you hear.