Greetings, writers—
On yesterday’s foggy morning we got a gorgeous, eerie visitation of crows.
I was late to meet a friend for a walk, but I stood in the middle of the street, marveling. They were strangely quiet—for crows, anyway, who are songbirds, despite their unlovely squawks—so quiet that I could hear the sound of their wings as they swooped from branch to power line and back again.
It seemed like a sign, but of what I didn’t know. And it wouldn’t be good, would it?
Crows were once held (maybe are still held) to be an omen of death; an old folktale has them meeting in tribunals to decide the capital fate of misbehaving brethren. “No, there’s no such thing as a crow court,” sighs one fact-checking website. (But crows are very interested in their own dead, and often gather around them, perhaps for the purpose of what one researcher calls “danger learning.”)
While I was ever-so-slightly unnerved by the birds’ silence and numbers, I mostly felt amazed—and profoundly lucky, too, to see them going about their mysterious, black-winged business before the sun had even risen on the shortest day of the year.
Here is Mary Oliver’s poem “Crows,” published in The New Yorker in 2000. (Is the second capitalized “In” a mistake? Seems weird to me, but anyway...)
When I started writing this post, I figured the prompt would be something along the lines of: “write a scene/poem/memory in which nature declares its presence in an unexpected way.”
I still think that’s a solid one. But then I found the Mary Oliver poem, and that gives us a few other possibilities.
—Answer one or more of Oliver’s questions, in any way you see fit: “Should I have led a more simple life?” “Have my ambitions been worthy?” “Has the wind, for years, been talking to me as well?”
—“I think/they don’t envy anyone or anything.” Write about envy (or its lack).
—Begin a piece of writing with “The wind is their friend.” (Feel free to change the pronoun: The wind is my friend/her friend/your friend.)
—I think the list “corn, mice, old hamburgers” is so funny. Write something that includes a comical list.
Happy writing—
Emily