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I saw an anonymous black bird on a postcard, and it brought to my mind the death of the crows. Several years ago a plague took away my crows, who always greeted me as I left the house. Always a caw or two, or a full raucous greeting, and I'd say, "Hi, guys!"
They'd perch, three or four at a time, in the tree across the street until I was safely on my way, then return to their own crow business: hunting food, doing some group-think activity, or practicing their shape-shifting.
In Deepak Chopra's novel MERLIN, the crows play a huge role, and Chopra makes it so clear how they think as one, how it is impossible (or nearly so, for on this hinges part of the story) to be a crow and to be an individual thinker. The group is all.
Well, that doesn't appeal much to me, though our modern, individualist societies aren't giving us a lot to be proud of these days. But the biggest stumbling block for me is the business of being one with everything ("Make me one with everything," as the Buddhist said to the hotdog vendor). Because where am I in all this? Where am I, this hard-won I? This I who lives and feels and cries and laughs. Who will know me, who will appreciate me—me!—when I am one with everything?
The crows disappeared for a while, and I could only hope that the plague that destroyed them would be short-lived. And indeed the virus died out, and those noisy, intelligent, pesky birds were back again, protecting, warning, entertaining us from the tops of trees. They have never returned to my neighborhood, however, and I miss them.
On a friend's island, years ago, I was sitting alone by the little lagoon, singing. And as I started my last song (for I was tired and ready to rejoin company) I saw three crows fly to the tip of a tall, half-dead pine tree on the far side of the lagoon. They perched there, silent and unmoving, until I finished my song. And then, as one (make me one with everything), they flew—swiftly, swiftly—into the distant blue sky over
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