This morning it's the birds that woke me, the "cheater, cheater, cheater" bird and the crows. You would think scoundrels like the crows would sleep later, but no, here they are, virtuous as any song bird, croaking and cawing enmasse in the maple tree. Their black bodies invisible in the dark but you don't need to see them to know they are there. They make themselves known with their harsh intemperate voices. As soon as they started cawing and raising a ruckus, the other birds all fell silent. It's like having a rowdy gang of boys calling names and talking smack just outside your window, they aren't doing anything bad just being loud and full of life. I can't help wondering if they are gathering together to go harass the owls in the neighborhood. I have seen them chase the little owls from their roost in the day time. They certainly can make noise, and some mornings their cousins the blue jays are as bad. The crows bring to mind Huginn and Muninn, Odin's ravens, Thought and Memory. He sends them out each day to bring him news of the world. I would like that, send the ravens out and have them tell me secrets when they return, yet, you have to wonder what kind of things birds like ravens or crows would notice and what they would choose to tell.
The crows outside this morning do not seem like old crows, but brash younglings full of boast and bluster!
About Crows
The old crow is getting slow;
the young crow is not.
Of what the young crow does not know,
the old crow knows a lot.
At knowing things, the old crow is still
the young crow's master.
What does the old crow not know?
How to go faster.
The young crow flies above, below, and rings
around the slow old crow.
What does the fast young crow not know?
Where to go.
John Ciardi
Maybe there is something us old crows can teach young ones still . . . maybe the only way to show the young crows where to go is by example. They can learn best from what you are, and each old crow has something to teach. When you look around you see them doing it every day, old crows that went to work every day, even when they did not feel like it, even when they would rather have stayed home, they went and didn't complain. Other old crows managed a lot of daily things, work that rarely gets noticed, but is necessary, the work of being available. Together the old crows, not quite as loud or as boisterous as young crows, slower and more deliberate, with the experiences of most of a lifetime, can at least point the way for young crows who inevitably will have to make their own mistakes, have their own experiences. It seems human beings often just can't learn from someone else's mistakes or triumphs, they never think those circumstances will occur to them, no matter how the old crow caws, young crows will have to discover their own route, their own roost. This is not a bad thing, just the way the world works I think. Still, you can only show them what you have lived and let them take from it what they will. Nothing else works, you just can't make them roost in your tree.
The crows are gone now, having moved off with their noise, even before it was light so I never did get to see them. Sunlight has arrived, gold and bright, lighting up white cane and smooth tree trunks. In the little breeze that has sprung up there is no bird song at the moment, everything is quiet and peaceful. Kind of makes you miss the lively crow chatter!
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