the crows break off from the rest of the darkness

and burst up into the sky

I didn’t work in my office for about two weeks. So when I went back on Monday, I marched in and out of the building like always. On Tuesday at lunch, by the front door of my building I spotted three long black feathers, sort of matted, the way you sometimes find near a bird death of some kind, but there was no obvious origin. But when I left for the day, my eyes followed those three feathers off the sidewalk and into the manicured carveout. There they landed on a most tragic figure not six inches from the walkway. It was a long-expired crow, perfectly color-matched to the mulch serving as its bed and therefore camouflaged except once I saw it, how could I have missed it these past two days? 

This crow had been reduced to bones and feathers and must have been there for quite some time. I recognized its talons first, identical and perfectly rounded as though they grasped a branch atop one of the tall pines shading the building. Its wings were partially spread, bones visible, feathers attached. I could imagine it perhaps balancing on a wire or just before takeoff with a breadcrumb neatly snicked from the walkway below. Peering more carefully, I followed tailfeathers up a spine and to a head with that crow’s beak, sideways and empty.

Likely this crow died by crashing into the glass edifice, as do a surprising number of birds — you can see their imprint on the glass all around the building. I’ve been in the office when it’s happened, too, always loud and shocking and unbearable. But how was it possible that no one had addressed this death scene for long enough that the crow had all but dried up and blown away? Children, adults, groundskeepers, professors, staff people like me had been passing it multiple times daily and had been doing so apparently for days or perhaps weeks. The thought made me unspeakably sad.

The Clark Fork River in another season.

One morning I woke early and was thinking about the crow. No matter how it had died, at the very least in its death state it should not have to endure humans tramping by, oblivious to its condition, or simply uncaring. It should not be subjected to fluorescent lights illuminating its ebony feathers at all hours, or a sprinkler wetting its innards early each morning. I pulled a couple of dish towels out of a drawer and grabbed some plastic gloves and a reusable grocery bag. I drove to the university and parked in my usual spot. It was before 7 am, but another staff person arrived simultaneously so I busied myself near my car until she went inside. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone while I accomplished my task.

He was stiff, and I was able to pick him up with my gloved fingertips and transfer him gently to the dish towel, like medics moving a patient onto a gurney. I plucked up any stray feathers from the mulch and placed them on his breast. I covered him with the second towel, lowered him into a bag, and walked back to the car with him. I re-parked in a location near the Clark Fork River, just a short distance from his pines, and I wandered with the bag until I found a spot under a cottonwood in some tall grass, where I hoped he wouldn’t be disturbed. The transit had loosened some of his parts but I managed to place him in the grass in approximately the same configuration as I’d found him. I placed the loose feathers on top, said a small thing or two, and headed back to my car.

---

The same evening after I saw the crow, my daughter and I were chatting in the grocery store parking lot where we had unexpectedly run into each other. The store is located very near the Poverello Center, a shelter for houseless and impoverished people, and the whole area has been inundated these past months with people seeking shelter and assistance. A ragged woman wearing shorts, flip-flops and a loose bra approached us and asked for money. I said no while my daughter pulled a dollar out of her wallet. Of the two of us, I am most certainly in better shape to be handing out dollars, but I’ve been trained from living in DC to never hand out money, so I didn’t. Afterwards, I felt ashamed of myself, how unwilling I was to share the resources that I have with someone who so clearly has none. 

On the way home after moving the crow to the riverside, thoughts of the houseless, and probably ill, woman came back to me. I had willingly left my home just past dawn to drive to campus in order to relocate a dead animal because its condition made me sad; yet I couldn’t be moved to engage with a real live human in front of me who could, perhaps, benefit from a dollar I knew I had in my wallet. Handing that over would have been much easier than the bird mission. 

Here it is: The crow wasn’t scary or confrontational, and it couldn’t talk nonsense at me or ask for more dollars or fall out of a bra or be so heartbreakingly messed up, so I engaged with it, because that was comfortable for me. Yet compassion springs from one internal source, whether that compassion be directed toward a dead animal or a live person, and I need to become willing to confront and overcome my own fears and biases about people who are unlike me. Perhaps then I can direct compassion toward others in my community and do something to support them, financial giving or volunteering or something else.

After all, they are human. We are all human.

Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky--as though

all night they had thought of what they would like 
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

-Mary Oliver