The Blackness of Crows

Nov 5 2017

Except for its lustre

the blackness of crows

seems to suck up all the light.

How odd

that a creature of sight

and intricate flight

and piercing eyes

would be so plain;

an anarchic Goth

instead of flamboyantly garbed

like some beautiful tropical bird.

Each big personality

in the same drab uniform.

Who looks down from his perch

with supreme indifference

as I pass beneath,
confined to the ground
and lost in my head. 

Whose guttural caw

conveys no desire to please.

Who flock

in funereal black

on branches of leafless trees,

an assembly

so glinting with mischief

and hinting of menace

it could almost be human, at least.

I never feel more an intruder

out in nature

than when being observed by crows.

They seem to own the place,

tolerating my presence

with amused detachment

the commanding swagger of height.

But I have always admired

these smart gregarious birds.

Who possess such tiny capable brains.

Who play

simply to amuse themselves.

Who carry a grudge

remembering who threatened or harmed.

So I make myself small,

passing respectfully

with a slight deferential nod.

And who gather to mourn,

a murder of crows

wheeling in ritual flight.

Do they too, seek comfort

in the presence of others,

struggle with unknowable gods?

I stop for a moment, and watch.

A solitary bird

on a bare branch

on a cold winter night,

tilting skyward

as if in thought.

Back-lit

against a full moon

he looks even blacker,

a crow-shaped hole

punched in the firmament.

The origin story to this poem is unimaginably indirect. I was reading a piece in the Atlantic (Nov 2017) by James Parker, a 10 year retrospective on the terrific film Michael Clayton. In describing the opening scene (and where the film also concludes) he describes a tableau of 3 horses using the term “animal indifference”. (Here's the whole line: “The horses watch him, three velvety dinosaur heads scanning this end-of-his-rope man with a balance of priestly inquiry and animal indifference. They breathe, they nod, incense of horse-exhalation in the cool air.”)

That expression really struck me. Although the image it evoked was not of horses, but of crows. I very much admire and am fascinated by crows (and ravens, as well as all corvids, for that matter). So what a propitious convergence of language and imagery. Which was all it took to get going on this poem ...one that has absolutely nothing to do with either Michael Clayton, George Clooney, or skittish horses!

Except an attentive reader will have noticed that animal indifference appears nowhere in the piece. In the end, it fell to editing. Because I think that while the expression so nicely fits a dumb animal – emphasizing the gulf between our awareness (not to mention our self-importance and solipsism!) and theirs – it doesn't fit the crow, where animal and human seem to converge: a creature in which it's not so much animal indifference as smug hauteur. So what ultimately emerges in the poem is supreme indifference. And later, amused detachment.