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I saw an anonymous black bird on a postcard, and it brought to my mind the death of the crows. A plague has taken 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 go on about 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 I don't think our modern, individualist societies give us much to be proud of. But that's the biggest stumbling block for me: to be one (make me one with everything, as the Buddhist said to the hotdog vendor)—to be one with everything. And then 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 have disappeared this year. We can only hope that this plague that has destroyed them is short-lived. I hope that the virus will die out, and within a year or two, those noisy, intelligent birds will be back again, protecting, warning, entertaining us from the tops of trees.
On a friend's island, years ago, I was singing, alone by the little lagoon. 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. 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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