Ravens Over Rent Money

Verse

Tar roof cracked like knuckles, six flights up from the street

Wire coop stitched by hand, chicken mesh and copper feet

Daddy banded every pigeon, called the color, not the name

Blue-bar, red-check, silver — each one wore a claim

Fed them cracked corn at dawn before the ravens came to perch

Black wings on the antenna, patient like they knew the worth

He'd race the fastest ones for purses folded in a sleeve

Said every bird you keep is a debt you learn to grieve

Pre-Chorus

How you pay a landlord with a thing that learns to soar

Daddy said the sky don't charge you rent you can't afford

Every loss he counted taught him something birds don't teach

Some things gotta circle 'fore they land in reach

Chorus

Ravens over rent money, circling black and slow

One bird buys the landlord, the rest we let go

Feathers on the ledger where the numbers used to bleed

Ravens over rent money, that's the price of what we need

Verse 2

Twenty years later, coop's mine, wire rusted at the seam

Sold the last two racers to cover a hospital scheme

Copper bands still jingle in a coffee can I keep

Ravens on the ledge now watching how I count my sleep

Landlord's son collects now, drives the block in something clean

Don't know his father's ledger got paid in wings and gray-green

I don't curse the crows for waiting, they just mirror what we owe

Every debt's got feathers if you watch it close enough to know

Pre-Chorus

How you pay a landlord with a thing that learns to soar

Daddy said the sky don't charge you rent you can't afford

Every loss he counted taught him something birds don't teach

Some things gotta circle 'fore they land in reach

Chorus

Ravens over rent money, circling black and slow

One bird buys the landlord, the rest we let go

Feathers on the ledger where the numbers used to bleed

Ravens over rent money, that's the price of what we need

Bridge

Turns out the ravens never wanted what we owed

They watched us learn to carry weight and still find road

Every bird I lost to hawks was one I learned to trust

The coop stayed standing longer than the debt turned into dust

Chorus

Ravens over rent money, circling black and slow

One bird buys the landlord, the rest we let go

Feathers on the ledger where the numbers used to bleed

Ravens over rent money, that's the price of what we need