An American Crow In Canada.
My uncle is struck by a golf ball and explodes mid flight. We weave the scattered plumage in the bearded lichen of his favorite tree.
At the funeral service, our slick blue-black feathers shimmer between the jack pine tree needles and wild apples. We share stale bread and summer bugs. Inside my beak, I feel the sentience transform into sustenance.
I peck these words while wind and tide impel the sea up the shore. We perch beneath a pale daylight moon together. Lunch is a rotten fish. Holiday tinsel for the nest.
Now is now. Our plans aren’t plans; they are codes of bark plate written into our hides. There are no stories. Everything happens because it happens. Isochronal and immovable, the laughter of a dying leaf.
Flying, a thrill so singularly real there’s no fitting translation. Muscle, follicle, shaft, feather. Sailing through air, above glittering waves, above the film in true time. Below daubs of gray clouds filter sunlight onto our orchard, the khaki-colored grass and maple leaves dipped into the first reds of fall.
We can’t control anything yet we somehow retain the impulse to survive and the ability to love. The last peck is a period.