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

Vitally important

Characters

My longest-standing friend
Her husband
My beloved

Bird

Me

Story

It crashed hard into the window pane, soft down feathers flew. We rose, alarmed, to see it on the tiles, breathing heavily. Its head, slightly up, laid itself down after a while.

"Not looking good," my friend said.

"But look at that heart," I pointed out.

She agreed: we both saw it pumping relentlessly, lifting the small, green torso up and down, up and down.

None of us dared go near the concussed creature, for fear of shocking him or her the more.

Time went by. Neither did the head lift nor did the heart stop beating.

Under my breath - what a vitally important place that is! - under my breath I asked whether there be guardian angels for birds as small as this, but I did not wait for an answer as I summonsed a guardian angel for this miniscule bloblet of warmth in the universe.

I pulled myself on my knees a little towards him and spoke softly and he blinked.

That gave me hope. "Hope is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul."

No, I did not think of Emily Dickinson's poem while I was oaring myself towards the tiny being, willing it to know I meant no harm. Dickinson's poem is in my marrow and needs no conscious articulation.

I stroked it once, expecting it to take fright.

It seemed to relax. My friend's husband encouraged me to take it in my hands.

"Just don't let it fly into the house," warned my friend: the bird faced the open door into the house.

The two men stationed themselves in the door to discourage any thought of flight into the house.

I edged in from behind and lifted the bird. Its claws immediately gripped my fingers. A good sign. I stroked and spoke. It blinked, looked, turned its head. Perkily, actually.

My friend stepped outside and the bird pooped.

"That's a positive sign!" we chorused.

"He looks like he'll stay there forever," my friend's husband said.

Yes, the little soul was comfortable, albeit his eyes remained surprised at the shape his heaven seemed to be taking: full of great, featherless entities making strange sounds.

At length, I got up, rested my hands on the balcony railing near a tree and suddenly he fluttered away. Landed on a steep branch, hung on admirably.

I shook the poop off my fingers, it splashed on the tiles.

We went inside.

I was aware how we had left him to himself and to the guardian angel of his life's flame.

When we went out again, he wasn't there.

He'd asked for nothing.

In extremity, he'd given us all his trust.

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all."

Under your breath, in your marrow, in your hands - vitally important places!