I Dream of Crows and Then I Try to Sing Myself to Sleep

I have no ear for holding the just right note,

but any sound tends to carry, especially

at night, especially in the cold. Nights

like this I remember how my great-great grandmother

knew to leave, and then to keep going.

When I am frightened, I say the prayer

her daughter’s daughter wrote and, often,

the world frightens me—the way we human

through it, wavering, in vibrant strokes.

All vision is revision, a sort of seeming:

this small house, these soft lights,

this old dog, newly washed and sleeping

on the couch beside me. All things so close.

All things so far away. I think she’d tell me

there are no bombs here, not yet.

There is no siren scream or whistlin

shriek to make the air hold its own breath.

Not once this week, this year, or any year

of my life have I had to throw my body

on top of my child’s—my own shrieking

a shock to myself.

Rebecca Brock’s awards include the 2025 Lascaux Poetry Prize, The Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize and the Editor's Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. Her work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, she is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Find more at www.rebeccabrock.org.