The poem follows a crow through one troubled day, and the crow seems to stand for something larger: a creature who can't settle anywhere. The title is wryly self-aware, calling this "another unnecessary poem about Crow," as if the speaker knows how often crows turn up in poetry and writes one anyway.
The images are physical and a little violent. The crow wakes to "velvet life," but its lung is "round and angry" and bleeds "raw salt." Knives and strange ink suggest pain, or perhaps writing itself, though the poem never spells that out. The crow is taken to a table of strangers and refuses to sit on that earth. Instead it goes "up and down and up," restless and discontented.
The ending is both funny and sad. The crow becomes "the only trumpet / for a company of ants," a loud voice with a tiny audience. The mood is bitter and prickly, with a thread of dark humor running underneath.