This week’s poem, by Ken Olson, takes up the question of how—and whether—beings of different species might understand each other. I love the gentle self-deprecation of this poem’s elevated language, and the speaker’s clear and affectionate fellow-feeling for a crow, despite all that’s unknown between them.

Ken Olson, retired president and CEO of Friends of Acadia, writes across genres. He was named a 2021 Maine Literary Awards finalist for Short Works in Poetry and, with co-authors, was a finalist for the 2017 John N. Cole Award for Maine-themed Nonfiction for the book Acadia National Park: A Centennial Celebration. Olson’s professional and personal writings are archived in Special Collections, Fogler Library, University of Maine.

Summary Judgment

The highest that we can attain
is not knowledge, but sympathy
with intelligence.
—Thoreau, “Walking”

Whether the crow’s agitation
is self-referential or intimates
a reciprocal relation between
it and me, there is, I see,
elation of a sort on its part,
else on mine an absurd
if tender over-cogitation
on a bird, now become doubt.

Or if solely one crow’s egoism
versus one boor’s solecism,
each species owes equally
for its misinterpretation
of the other creature’s heart
and, as with certain mates,
things even out.

– Ken Olson

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Summary Judgment” copyright 2025 by Ken Olson, appears by permission of the author.