Early Edit 0.01 Ellz, river

[tectak]

Beetle-black with glinty, guilty eye, the carrion  crow
comes craving, raucous, raiding.She cleaves the dawn
still wrapped in dreams of sleeping souls. Rasping words
escape through sashes open-cracked, up to the misted sky.
She flinches, as if pricked by flea, when sight or sound
disrupts her flight. A twitch, a  twist in mock distress, she calls
to warn but draws the early gun. Flash! Dashed she tumble-turns,
a single quill flat-spins to ground... morning has passed to man.
Still things of blood - furred, feathered or spined -
lie spread and flat on tar grit roads; all gone before the fox awakes.
Wings whiffle down to empty lanes and hide in hawthorn spiked
in white; then swoop to swallow shreds of red from dead of night.
Far afield lie dappled drays, full stretched on grass as damp
as river  beds; the mares from night plume golden mists to lift
themselves into the sun. They steam like engines coaled and fired;
shimmered and shivered in to the working day.
See now how God awakes and breaks the wraiths that swirl
and scurry through dove-cooed oaks. Look where the steeple
sheds the shroud, where  naked branches starkly sway;
a gentle shifting in the air. April morn has brought an early spring.
tectak
April 2015

I really like this. The alliteration and line breaks in some places remind me of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and in others of Gerard Manley Hopkins. As far as crit: I have some concerns about your enjambment...could do with a review. While looking for rhymes, I spotted 'spined' and 'spiked' in S2 and eagerly looked for more such pairs. Alas, it was not to be. On just my own account I really want the steeple to "shred" the shroud, not "shed" it, so I spent some time looking for alternatives to "shreds" in S3 and came up with "shards." Don't feel like you have to change it just for me, but I had such a lovely image of the morning mist being parted by the steeple, and also I kept reading it as "shreds" even after I knew it wasn't.
You also change tone from line to line quite a bit, in particular here:
"....where  naked branches starkly sway;
a gentle shifting in the air." from "starkly" to "gentle" is a rather athletic jump. Let's take a look at your choice of descriptive words----
Beetle-black, glinty, guilty, craving, raucous, raiding, cleaves, rasping,-----
and that's just in the first stanza. If you are going to do that switch, I think you need to be more deliberately mindful about where you place it, and the contrast should be intentional, designed to affect your reader.
Last nit: I have trouble with your syntax in S4. I love the initial image conflating horses with steam engines, but keep stumbling over "shimmered and shivered". I think it might be the tense shift  from 'lie', 'plume', 'lift', and 'steam', to "shivered and shimmered".  I have no problem with this tense shift;
"Far afield lie dappled drays, full stretched on grass as damp
as river  beds;" because it is clear that it refers only to the horses and what they have been doing all night, but in the other phrase, you move from the comparison to the descriptive phrase which, since it follows after the comparison, must refer to both the steam engine and the horses and what they are doing now. May I suggest just using "shimmer" and "shiver" to match the tense of "they steam" ? Also in the last sentence, I think it should be "into" not "in to."
I feel the need to say again, "Good poem!" Carry on.

Hi leah,
thanks for this. You come at me from the sun which means I do not see you until it is too late...however; in order of importance, then.
Enjambment. I am happy to change line breaks on critical demand...provided I afford the same  munificence to everyone. For me, anything subjective MUST have rules which work more often than they fail. That usually guarantees a consensus (collective term) of crits; the best one can hope for. My principal yardstick in unmetered poetry is simple. Never enjamb on uncertainty. If you must enjamb the reader should be able to predict what the first word on the  next line could be.
so:
.........as damp
AS grass.
or:
......the carrion crow
COMES craving...
or:
...where the steeple
SHEDS the shroud

OK. It is a rule of mine. I break it.
Next principal. Note to self. Read it loud and listen . The question is can one READ the enjambment without sounding unnaturally staccato, or even implying a pseudo-caesura? In this area I often fail...but it is not for want of trying. Suggestions please.

Shreds? Hmmm. I quite like that. It was not what I saw, but maybe.

Rhymes. Do not look for them, they are not there.

I disagree on the juxtaposition of starkly and gentle. They are parameters of a different order and do not mutually exclude anymore than, say " He was a short man, with a piercing voice" The "athletic" leap from "short" to "piercing" is not problematical because one does not conflict with the other. "starkly" and "gentle" likewise; moreso, I believe, as the modifiers refer to different subjects, branches and air. I rest my case.

The S4 syntax. Yes. You are more right than wrong. To be simplistically correct I suppose I should say "shimmering and shivering in to the working day"  but I specifically determined to link "shimmered and shivered" to horse not engine; to that end I think that shimmered and shivered are more equine than engyne

Lastly, that old chestnut "into" or "in to". Someone has a rule. "into" for direction (walked into the shop") , "in to" for everything else ( water in to wine, handed himself in to the police).  I use "in to"  when I want it to be read as two words. I use "into" when I want it to be read as one word. I am, unsurprisingly, quite wrong, quite often. By "read", of course, I mean read outloud...er...or out loud. Ahem.

Changes will come. Credited.
Many thanks,
tectak

---

Still, wikipedia says "dray horse", not "dray (horse)". You don't say "drafts" for "draft horses", do you? (do you? Now that I think about it....) Anyway, I shouldn't really press on it too much, and yeah, I catch the drift -- misty sky would be kinda wrong. (although, ahem, clouds are nothing but mist, but that's way beside the point, and a bit of a joke.) Furred is real great, too, with the alliteration on the line there.

No. Wiki says:

Dray may refer to: A dray horse (We grammar Nazis stick together)
Best,
tectak