Six Caws

I love the magic of the mornings at this time of year. Driving to work in the damp dark, lights like paint strokes across the black asphalt, twisting devils of leaves writhing in the headlights, passing the sleepy pockets of light that I know are houses hidden in the hollows, where coffee is dripping into a clear, clean pot and the news is buzzing on some device in the background while stiff spines try to loosen and heavy eyelids attempt their lifts. How many secrets, how many stories I pass as I glide past in the dark, in the morning, in the stillness of November.

And then arriving at my place of work, and noticing for the first time that one of the shrubs in the parking lot has pink berries on it, and delighted that I don’t know what kind of bush this is, and pocketing a dozen of the berries, where they will go into an envelope in the drawer in the baker’s rack in my wife’s kitchen, joining dozens of other collections of seeds and pods for that garden I just know I’ll plant and tend someday when I am obsolete at my job and ushered homeward so as not to get in the way any longer.

The crows watched for my arrival, and there they were! The big bossy bird, perched on the lamp post directly over my silver head with his feathers carved from coal, tolling again and again with his six caws. I know he knows me, they know me, and this fills me with wonder and peace. Isn’t this remarkable? Isn’t this a wondrous thing? A creature with whom I cannot directly converse recognizes me, anticipates me, has a rhythmic ritual with me each workday morning. And praise be to the Maker of crows that I don’t take this for granted, and that the crow is not bored with me, and look — here is my holy and unfeigned gratitude for the potential that we may yet truly talk someday, the crow and I, on the other side of this valley in which we, two solitary creatures, soar and shuffle.

The air is clean outside, and I can step out and taste it anytime I wish. What binds me? Nothing but what I allow.

~ S.K. Orr