Saturday, July 1, 2017

community

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A ‘flock’ of crows reside in the woods by my new school, or should I say I’m a new student? … they are obviously a family group, with their own distinct inflection of sounds when they call to each other. A bit different from the dialect of the city crows near my apartment, who have a hardened edginess to their communication. Are these city dwellers more stressed? Or is their stridency meant to overcome the noise and confusion of the humans rushing about beneath them? Perhaps they are a ‘murder’, a 'mob', or a 'gang' of crows?

I sometimes look for the Preserve’s crows as I cross the bridge by their wooded ground as I travel to and fro for a course in field biology. Even when I’m not thinking, trying to focus/not focus on my breathing, I can’t help but notice their antics or hear their friendly calls to one another. They happily disregard us, unlike the city crows, who seem to challenge us when Dottie and I take walks through the streets and alleys.

Dottie, Buddha that she is, remains unperturbed – unless, of course, the rabbit is about!

siblings
locked in mock battle!
winter crows




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4 comments:

Devika Jyothi said...

Good reading here, Williams, as always :)

wishes,
devika

Pasadena Adjacent said...

I worked on a huge construction site for a few months. The owners were turning 400 acres of oil refinery into tilt up ware houses. The strangest thing was nearing the end of the day when whole giant flocks of crows would show up out of nowhere. They'd perch on lines, on building edges. It was straight out of "The Birds"

bandit said...

tilt up warehouses...

bandit said...


Fitting it should land here. I'm in a nostalgic mood. A scent of melancholy in archaic language. The language of birds ...


I'm about to leave River City. Conflict brought us here, back home, though I was a stranger. Home is wherever the sky takes flight for our breed, I imagine. Isolation, as well as familiarity, leads us away. I'll still be close to a river though. This time, the sun will be behind me ...

Originally posted winter/spring 2011