I was the first to learn to count –
un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith.
Saith brain, seven crows…

We were not born from a mother or father
but crawled from the corpse of a dead crow –
maggots, then flies, then black, black flapping things.

We taught you not to count on fingerbones 
with the touch of our wings brushing
the divides between the worlds.

We taught you to count in threes,
sixes, sevens, nines, sacred numbers.
We did not teach you the numbers of the Gods.

When you asked why we take the eyes of the dead
and put them in the empty eye sockets of seers
we told you our eyes are without count.

We place them in the palms of the hands 
of the blind so maggots can be born from them,
flies, crows, to carry visions of the past, present, end.

Of when the skies fall in a sheen of crow feathers,
black, black, black, just a glimpse of indigo.
They tell you they are without number.