Red Beads

Something landed on the branch of the star magnolia just outside my window, on a brisk March day when the fat and furry bud cases were barely cracked open to reveal white petals within. The movement of settling wings in the periphery of my vision is what caught my attention. I turned my chair to see it was him, there on my branch, keeping his balance by the shifting of his tail feathers. In his beak, he held a strand of red beads, transparent glass, and they seemed to glow from within in the low light of the afternoon sun. He looked at me directly, first with one eye, then the other. I left my desk, grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door, and went outside. He hopped down branch to branch until he was at my shoulder, where he looked at me again, with one eye at a time, twisting his neck from side to side, a habit he knew annoyed me.
"I thought you weren't coming back," I said. He pushed his beak, still holding the beads, toward me. I cupped my hands under them as he let them drop. He shook his head and said, "I lied. You know I always do that." "I forget," I answered and walked toward the back yard. "AWWWW," he called, "Don't go away!" I kept walking. He tried to take flight from the tree but its branches got in the way of his wing feathers. He was forced to drop to the ground, waddle out from under it along the path to more open ground, where he could take flight. He flew out to beyond where I was headed, then circled. "You're mad I came back?" he asked in a pass near my head that made me instinctively duck and swerve a little, which only served to aggravate me further.
"I'm mad you left. What do you think?" I answered, turning away. "You know I can't live in a house and you won't live in a tree. Do we have to go over all that again?" he snapped. "Where did you steal the beads?" I asked, hoping to offend him. "Bought them. Mexico." he answered. "So you shifted to buy me beads?" I couldn't decide if I was touched or angered. "Fly with me," he demanded.
"No." I draped the beads over the branch of a witch hazel tree, longing to pause to smell the curled yellow blossoms. Instead, I turned and walked toward the house, feeling him fly past my head once and again as he made passes through the yard. I went inside and closed the door, leaning back against it for a second. I heard a loud long "Cah-aaaaawwwww" from high in the sky, then the branch by the window scraped the siding when he landed. I did not look out the window. I opened the basement door, pulled the chain to turn on the light, and stepped down into the musky space where I could not look out windows to let him catch my eye. I folded laundry, sheets first, drawing my arms wide to pull the wrinkles out, smoothing the fabric with each fold, then the towels, snapping each one crisply and creasing it slowly and firmly, perfect quarters, perfect thirds, a perfect stack. I looked around for more to do, but things were in order. I climbed the steps, my feet heavy. Silence. I paused and took a deep breath before I opened the back door. Only the beads were there, draped over the outside knob, swinging against the white paint as my hand shook on the inner knob.
I scanned the sky, the bare high branches of the trees along the property line. I pulled the shining beads from the doorknob. There were many shapes and graduated sizes, a carved glass flower in the center, leaf shaped beads to each side. It was beautiful, perfect. The glass beads felt cool in my hands. I held them to my heart. I could feel it pounding: Was he gone for good this time?

Sometimes A Crow

Sometimes a crow

Is joy on the wing

Flying high

Dipping low tumbling

On the currents of the wind.

Sometimes a crow

Is death dropped down

Dark and glistening, sharp beak

Picking a bloody carcass

At the side of the road.

Sometimes a crow

Is part of a pair

Or a family of more

And tells the sweet story of

Us sharing our lives.

Sometimes a crow

Is warning and fear

Cawing out to tell

Of the terrible dark consequences

Of what we do today.

Sometimes a crow

Is promise and hope

Rising in the sun

Soaring high over the hill

Of rushing drafts in the swift wind.

-

-

Sometimes
A crow

Is

Just a crow

Like me.

2-27-09

Words and Photographs in Books - Fiction

We drove north out of town, following the directions they gave us, and stopped at the side of the road where they said it happened. But we could find no signs. Nothing at all. There were no scraps of paper, no tire marks, no beaten down grass, no broken glass, no burn marks or ashes, no signs of any disturbance or anything unusual at all really. We picked up a few beer cans and some fast food litter to try to redeem the trip from total pointlessness. We debated a while if we should go back and ask for directions again or if perhaps we'd gotten the crossroads wrong, turned too soon or gone too far. In the end, we decided we didn't have time to try again so we drove away, leaving the tall cottonwoods rustling their leaves along on the far side of the ditch. We wondered aloud and privately if it really ever happened and then forced ourselves to change the subject and stop talking about it as we drove on the our next appointment.

Years later, I was driving that road on the way to visit a friend, when the fenceline cottonwoods rose into my view ahead. The early morning light sent shadows of them crossing the roadway and without meaning to, I slowed down as I neared the spot. And there in the tall ditch grasses, exactly where they'd said it would be, was everything we'd expected to find. The books were there, tumbled in the ditch, some lying open, their pages fluttering in the breeze. Black skid marks on the asphalt lead to tire tracks that flattened the grasses. Broken glass, the smell of gasoline and oil, a burned patch in the grass along the shoulder. Envelopes of guitar strings, business cards, matchbooks, a makeup case, CDs, your sunglasses, and folded roadmaps.

I looked up and down the road, but there were no cars, no other people. I started to gather up the books into a pile when a crow landed on the hood of my truck and two more landed on the center line of the pavement. They cawed and flicked and shook their wings and cocked their heads to stare at me. I looked down and the book in my hand was open to the photo of you, victorious and smiling, a strand of hair blown across your face, standing on the steps of the courthouse. I dropped to my knees and cried as I held the book to my heart. The crows cawed, flapped wings, rose and settled again together in a broken branch of the cottonwood trees.

In the end, I left everything there. I knew if I took more time to gather things up, if I picked up the books and straightened their pages and closed them and stacked them in my truck, that I would be late to see my friend. And what would I do with them, how would I explain them being there? What good could those things do me anyway; what use were they to me now? I drove away, leaving it all there, fluttering in the wind, catching and reflecting the sunlight.

I drove away and as I did, the crows dropped out of the tree and flew along and behind me for a ways before veering off into a valley to dive and tumble with each other until I had to leave sight of them to turn my eyes back to the road.

My friend was waiting on the porch, smiling, with a pitcher of lemonade for us to share and a vase of sparkling yellow roses, fresh with dew and glistening in light reflecting from the white of house walls. We talked a while, laughed, shared stories, joked. We talked about our plans, our hopes. Then I saw it there on the chair between us, your book, open, face down. She saw me looking at it and picked it up, closed it, and slid it onto her lap. She broke the silence that had settled upon us by offering me more lemonade, and we talked a while more, remembered, planned, laughed. Once, we sat silent for a while to watch a coal black cat walk the distance of her driveway, then double back and stalk a grasshopper that was sitting in the gravel. The grasshopper popped high over the cat's head at the last minute and the cat walked on as though nothing had happened. When I got up to leave, she stood to hug me goodbye and I saw that her lap was empty, the book not there. She smiled and walked me to the truck and hugged me once more before I drove away.


I miss you but I am not sure you are really gone.

The First Time I Flew

I was enjoying one last glass of wine on the steps of the porch, listening to the light wind move the leaves in the trees down by the road. He walked up the drive in his long black coat, making me aware the evening was cooling off. I pulled my black lace shawl close around my shoulders. "Can I share your wine?" he asked. I handed the glass to him. We talked a while about little things, nothing really. He handed my wine glass back to me. I finished the bit of wine remaining and set the glass on the step. "Fly with me." he said. As I was thinking what he meant by that, wondering if he had a pilot's license or if he meant taking a trip somewhere, he flicked open his hand. Long black feathers streamed from his fingers and along his forearm. I looked to his face, where his nose was a long black beak and his eyes were shiny black, glistening. He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his elbows, and his arms were wings. He folded them behind his back, and said to me again, "Fly with me." As I was thinking that I would love to if only my shawl were magic, I looked down to pull it closer around me and opened my hand to see that it too streamed with feathers. A little stunned, I spread open my shawl that was now long black flight feathers covering my arms and hands, and the unexpected force of feather against air rocked me gently. He opened his black wings and lifted off, raised them high, and pushed down. Flapping, he rose, flew over me, circling back around. I spread my wings too, and pressed them against the air, and rose with him. We flew in the moonlight over the rustling trees, gliding along the creek, past the big oak, down to the lake, swooping low, then climbing high, soaring, sailing, and returning along curving lines of the creek to land, back in the yard. "Thanks for the wine" he said, as he pulled his coat around himself and began to button it. I watched him leave down the drive, then turned myself, gathering my shawl to me as I went inside with the empty glass.

I Buy Art at WomanSong

WomanSong has music and drumming and talks and workshops and vendors who are musicians and artists.

I try to buy a little something. I wish I could buy more. This past WomanSong, we were thick in the middle of building the house so all the money was going there. But I bought this piece from Suzie. Isn't is amazing? I was fresh into crows last year. So was Susie. Still am. Send me a crow story or a crow poem or some crow artwork, please! This one has a mama crow and many baby crows all out on a limb. In the nest, there is a beautiful egg, unhatched. I guess permanently that way. The name of the piece is "Mother Can't Fix Everything." There is joy in the world, and a little sadness too. Great things happen to us, but once in a while we lose something too.

Cat and Crow

He had a pet crow with feathers black as coal that shimmered blue sheen in the sunlight. He had a pet cat, with fur dark as deepest night and soft as velvet. The crow rode about the farm on his shoulder, struggling to hold on as he did chores, flying up to perch above on the beams of the barn when he moved too much or when he brushed her off. The cat kept near his feet, just far enough to keep out of the way of boots and tools and trouble, but near enough to catch the milk he squirted in her direction at milking time.
One spring morning he missed the crow landing on his shoulder as he left the house for the bus stop, but some days she was busy hunting or riding the breezes and was there to greet him after school, so he did not worry just then. He missed her again as the bus pulled up to his home stop when she was not on the jagged branch of the oak tree on the corner. He missed the cat too at milking time. He called for them and poked around the farm, in out buildings and along fencerows, half certain they would both turn up soon from their oddly coincidentally-timed disappearances. As the number of days grew greater, he missed them a little less each day and soon summer swimming and fishing and biking into town with friends kept him distracted. It was a mystery he would occasionally ponder, and missing them would make him sad, so he would allow himself to move on to other thoughts.
Late in summer, he and his friend were tossing a ball back and forth in the farthest reach of the farmyard, where evergreens formed a border between the lawn and the cornfield beyond. He jumped for the high ball, missed, and turned to run for it. His friend came to help look, and lifted spruce branches so that he could look on the ground under for the ball. That is how he found them. Perfect skeletons of a cat and a crow, meshed together.
How did it happen? Did the natural enemies that normally coexisted peacefully for the sake of the boy give in to instinct and battle with each other? Were they after the same mouse or grasshopper and crashed by accident? Who died first? Did the crow attack first and dive at the cat and dig its claws deep into the cat’s loose coat? Did the cat turn and claw or bite some critical artery and kill the crow, whose claws remained firmly locked onto its spine? Did the cat crawl off with its horrible burden finding rest under the tree for shelter, to bleed to its own death or to slowly starve over days?
The friend held the boy’s shoulders as he threw up his lunch, then stood silently by as the boy panted to catch his breath. They found shovels in the barn. They dug a trench along side the skeletons and scraped them in. The boy and his friend buried their bones, cat and crow together, tentative friends, ultimate enemies, partners in their tragic death. They covered the white bones with black black earth.

Three Crows Go Driving

From an entry in the back packing journal dated 6-24-08







Three Crows Go Driving

Three crows go for ice cream
In their Maserati GT S stick shift,
Black of course.
They order a black cow,
A root beer float, and
A hot fudge sundae.

Three crows go to the cemetery
To pay their respects
To the Civil War veterans.
One wonders how much longer before
The country is ‘color blind’.
Another says “I’m optimistic.”
The last says “We’re optimistic
About everything.”

Three crows go to the nature preserve
To photograph wildflowers
They find black snakeroot
In the woods
Skunk cabbage by the stream,
And Crow’s foot violet
At the edge of the prairie.

Three crows speed home
One says “Busy day.”
Another says “Important day.”
Third says “Cop.”
They pull over as lights flash.
Crow at the wheel
Hands over a license.
Officer returns to his car.
And looks ahead.
The Maserati is gone.

Papers drift and tumble
Where the car was.
Officer steps back out,
Bends to pick up the pieces
Three coupons
For the ice cream store,
A map of the cemetery,
A tracing of a crow’s foot violet leaf.

“Yeeeaaaah” comes a caw from overhead
Three crows fly away,
Turn and keel in the warm breeze
then fly steady westward.

One Crow

There is a crow alone tonight. We were headed south on 23 with long shadows crossing the road. As we crested a hill, we saw them there, near the center line. feasting on some very flat roadkill. She took flight, arcing over the trees. He flapped his wings, rose, then dropped back to the pavement. Why? Did he misjudge the angle of the wind, did he take our little car as too small to be a threat, did the low angle of the sun confuse him? At the last second, he rose again to be slammed into our grill. I saw a tumble of wings in the rearview mirror. Did she know and fly on away? Or did she come back and linger near the lifeless body to make sure? There is a crow alone out there tonight.

You Chose Crow (Fiction)

The thing I hate most about you now is your ugly beak. I hate that it is shiny and hard and as long as the whole entire rest of your head. I hate its pointy end and your sharp black tongue inside. I hate your wrinkled black nostrils. Sure, I am glad your guardian creature was there or we’d be very very dead right now, but why couldn't you think of anything else? That crow came diving into the gully just ahead of our plummeting car and you couldn't focus on the decision at hand? The creature demanded “Choose!”. You chose “Crow.” You never think, do you?
I don’t mind your black beady eyes. They are not that different from when you used to squint across the kitchen table at me, drunk and stoned and angry. I don’t mind your hunched posture. It is not that different from when you came home from work, hot and filthy, and skulked around the edges of the kitchen, looking for beer and Jack Daniels. It is not even your hideous shriveled claws I hate most, for they are much like your metal-cut and dried-blistered and callused hands were. It is that beak. That awful black and shiny pointed beak.
No, wait. That must be second what I hate the most. What I well and truly hate the most is that when I look at you, it is like looking in the mirror, for to the untrained observer, now, you and I look exactly alike. Exactly. Alike. That is what I hate the most.
Artwork by Sheri Lee Butler, Warrenvlle, IL

Three Crows II

Three crows fly

Three crows fly
over the road and land
rising again as I pass
their dry dismembered meal
an aging rabbit carcass
furry bits of scattered death

Three crows call
from trees across the creek
what do they plot
and plan with their raucous voices
loud against the gentle sounds
of tumbling creek and soft wind in branches?

Three crows wait
high in an oak tree
for the wind and storm to pass
or merely for reason to fight it to fly
they flick their tails to balance
on wildly waving branches
as rain pelts the land

Three crows tumble
they ride the air and glide
then one by one drop and roll
breaking out of the fall
just as wingtips touch wingtips
they play with the wind

Three crows flee
a pair of sparrows that flap
and flutter and rush in and pull back
what sort of crime did they commit
to raise such ire in tiny birds
they beat strong wings in a straight line away

Three crows nest
and tend the pair of ugly young
that are offspring of two and siblings of one
one tends the nest while the other two search
for bits of tender decaying carrion
to drop into the throats
of the hideous hungry chicks

drawing by

Crow Drawing by Sherri Lee Butler

Why Three Crows?

I keep wondering why I often see crows in threes along the side of the road. I asked a friend who knows about nature if he knew why and he said “Because they are too smart to hang out ON the road?” Not exactly part of the question I wanted answered, so when I was up half the night with sinus issues, I did a little reading.
There seems to be two kinds of three-member crow families.
In one, one of the kid crows hangs out with the mom crow and the dad crow to help raise the young the next year. Sometimes, it goes off then to find a mate and one of the new young stays. Sometimes though, it stays and all the new young move on. Or form their own group nearby to find mates the following year. Probably making fun of the one that stayed home with mom and dad so long.
In the other kind of three-crow family, when a male finds a mate, its brother may set up housekeeping with the couple until it finds its own mate, or if the first male dies, the brother may stay and mate with the female. Jeeze. for lazy!
One bit of crow natural history I found in my late-night reading was distubing to me: Crow males are dominant. Might we need to form a few NOWC (National Org. for Women Crows) groups and work that 'problem'?

What I saw

I saw three crows on the road today. I saw black ponies standing in the snow. I saw a hawk diving for a kill. I saw people arguing in a parking lot. I saw the sun through black branches of leafless trees. I saw ice crystals on the windowpane.