“How to Make a Crow” by Sarah Sands Phillips
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “How to Make a Crow” by Sarah Sands Phillips, part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
How to Make a Crow
By Sarah Sands Phillips
Following the river stream, I gathered
the fallen feathers.
How many make a crow?
And will it look the same pulled back together
with one silver bolt.
Because that is all I have. That is all
they have offered me.
Will wings still flutter the wet off their tips,
dancing at dawn on the dew tin roof?
I wonder how often parts of me have
drifted away.
Is it a crisis for them too? What
they molt is what I keepโas
I cannot bear it, being one feather less.
Copyright ยฉ Sarah Sands Phillips
Published as part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
Sarah Sands Phillips (b. Tsรญ Tkarรฒn:to, Canada) is a Red River Mรฉtis/British-Irish interdisciplinary artist and poet. She holds an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford (2019). She has exhibited in Canada and internationally and her writing has appeared in Splinter; tba: Journal of Art, Media and Visual Culture; and Public Journal among others. She is currently based in Japan.
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