Totally quiet crows

The crows

Four of them have been cawing

for days now. I don't know

why the word is 'cawing',

because they craah.

I've never heard a crow do anything other than craah -

on different pitches,

at different lengths

and alternating tempos;

but 'caw' is a human invention that can be dropped, when it comes to crows.

All that is neither here nor there, really. But

the pied crows and their craahs

have been dominating 

air space as well as

air waves.

I tell my mother on the phone

that they remind me of her

(she's forever complaining

about her croaky voice)

and she bursts out laughing

and says, "Please greet the crows

from me."

Well, they sit on the roof,

grooming themselves

- I notice they are very curious

about each other's underwings -

 

and they poop generously,

rudely onto the tiles

from their vantage

on the wifi dish.

It's two big, shaggy ones

and two sleek, younger-looking ones -

are they a family,

invading this suburb

of sunbirds, white-eyes, weavers, mousebirds,

hoopoes, robins, thrushes, bulbuls, gulls,

sacred ibis, hadidah, flycatchers, wagtails, 

nightjars, herons, plovers, doves,

gymnogene and guinea fowl?

Or are they rival pairs

- ragged oldies against a shiny new generation -

craahing, gliding, hopping, hooping,

hoping to talk things through?

One of them does

fly a close hoop over

the older-looking pair,

who turn their necks up with interest,

but do not jump.

Their expressive beaks

and measuring eyes,

their confident shoulders

and charming white bibs,

leave a person guessing.

Since I've beeen writing this,

they are totally

quiet.

- Silke Heiss, 5th December 2020 

Crow is the totem animal of Sacred Law

"If you look deeply into Crow's eye, you will have found the gateway to the supernatural. Crow knows the unknowable mysteries of creation and is the keeper of all sacred law."

"The law which states that 'all things are born of women' is signified by Crow."

"Human law is not the same as Sacred Law. More so than any other medicine, Crow sees that the physical world and even the spiritual world, as humanity interprets them, are an illusion. There are billions of worlds. There is an infinitude of creatures. Great Spirit is within all."

- from 'Medicine Cards' by Jamie Sams and David Carson, New York: St Martin's Press, 1988, 1999.

Photo: Charles J Sharp