Wondering What They're Up To - May 30 2022

 

Wondering What They're Up To

May 30 2022

A ruckus of crows

in the thickening dark.

Somewhere in the tree-tops

belligerent caws

are volleying back and forth

as the dogs and I walk below.

They sound like old cantankerous men

talking over each other,

squabbling in loud gravelly voices

of querulous discontent.

I know how intelligent they are,

how they're said to remember

human faces

and whatever threats or offences

we once may have committed

no matter how long ago.

So am I paranoid to wonder

if we are being scrutinized

rebuked

or even imperilled?

Will they descend on us,

a murder of crows?

The big black birds,

like a gang of adolescents

out for mischievous fun.

But soon realize

we are immaterial,

of no concern to them.

This confab of crows

is all their own,

a separate society

that lives parallel to ours

but need not intersect.

So we walk briskly past,

respecting their separateness

and humbled by their mastery

of this hard-scrabble wilderness

where they're so at home

and we the intruders.

Wondering

just what it is they're saying

and what they may be up to

on this dark moonless night.

At the keen intelligence

behind those piercing eyes.

I seem to have come up with my own collective noun for a group of crows. I was familiar with “murder”, but after writing that first line I looked into it, and found these alternatives: “horde”, “mob”, “muster”, and “parcel”. No ruckus. No confab. But two alternatives well worthy of the shortlist, I'd say.