A dead crow in Portland gave life to a poem that put Pattie Palmer-Baker at the top of a worldwide literary contest.

Palmer-Baker, of North Portland, was driving along North Ainsworth Street when she spotted a crow’s body, surrounded by other crows as if they were holding a crow funeral. “I swear they all bowed,” she said. “I was very moved by that.”

The sighting inspired a 200-word poem, “Gangsters of the Portland Sky,” which she wrote in a class she took with poet John Morrison. Then, while online one day, she stumbled across an announcement for the Bivona Prize, a literary competition for writers older than 65. Palmer-Baker, who gives her age as “well past 65,” decided to enter in the poetry category, one of five. The prize is named for the late Ginnie Siena Bivona, a novelist, poet and book editor who began her literary career in her late 40s and co-founded the Texas-based organization Ageless Authors to support senior writers.

Larry Upshaw, executive director of Ageless Authors, said more than 50 judges winnowed approximately 450 international submissions to three finalists. The organization announced Palmer-Baker as the winner July 10.

“Pattie impressed our people like no other,” Upshaw said by email. A second poem she entered, “The Moon and I Are Drunk,” tied for second place.

Palmer-Baker said she didn’t begin writing seriously until about 20 years ago, when she took early retirement from her career as an English teacher and school counselor. “I had been doing artwork” – she’s exhibited her paper and calligraphy collages throughout the state – “and I played around with using poetry that I would write in my artwork and I wanted to develop my poetry more,” she said. She began taking poetry classes and workshops and joined a writing critique group. She has since published poems and won several poetry contest honors.

Pattie Palmer-Baker.Robert R. Sanders

She also pegged away at a novel, which took her two decades to complete. “I was never serious about it,” she said. “I just thought I’d try it.” To her shock, the novel won Del Sol Press’ 2017 Del Sol Prize for First Novel in a contest judged by best-selling author Hallie Ephron. Del Sol published the novel, “Mall,” this March.

“It’s a dystopia that’s a utopia,” Palmer-Baker said. “Mall” is set in an enclosed community where no one is poor, crime doesn’t exist and everyone is employed, beautiful and long-lived. But there’s a catch, of course. The novel follows a woman from the outside world who finds her way in and is “definitely conflicted when she gets there,” Palmer-Baker said.

Palmer-Baker said her next writing project is a chapbook about her parents. She continues to take poetry classes and meet with her critique group. Her first- and second-place poems in the Ageless Authors contest are going into an anthology that will be published later this year; the organization also gave her a total of $425 in cash prizes and a winner’s certificate.

Palmer-Baker said “Gangsters of the Portland Sky” is among several poems she’s written about crows. She’s done artwork about crows, too. “I just think they’re fascinating birds.”

“Gangsters of the Portland Sky”

By Pattie Palmer-Baker; reprinted with permission.

Everywhere they black-litter lawns,

stutter-hop on buckled sidewalks,

cake-walk down Willamette Boulevard,

and flutter-kick away from speeding cars’

smash and gash at the minute’s last flicker.

They recognize faces, post sentries

in bare-branched trees, screech coded warnings

beware of us, the gangsters of the Portland sky!

We dive bomb red-tail hawks mid thermal swirl and catcall their retreating swoop.

I have often wondered whether it is better to know

a little about a lot or a lot about a little.

I could google crows, learn more about them

every day observe their black bird actions

and stop studying my own behavior,

stop trying to understand why blood pumps

red outside my body but looks blue in my veins

and why the beats of my heart slow

to an almost stillness when I think

of my father who lies in his grave but is not dead.

I do know something that is not a poem

instead a naked fact.

Once I saw lying in a street island’s center

a dead crow encircled by a small cadre of crows

and on some arcane signal they all bowed.