i wasn't going to say anything about this.
but then, as time goes on, it feels like i am dishonoring something. This is the cloth and the stick that i sent to Debra in California....Luring Crows. i packaged it in a very LARGE cardboard folder, much larger than the cloth, to accomodate the stick. it was more than 2ft square. all kinds of feelings and thoughts were present when i was taping the stick down, wrapping the cloth in tissue. making it secure. all kinds of thoughts and feelings about exchanging this THING for money. a LOT. and in it i enclosed a short note to her telling her about what that meant to me...luring crows.
how there are crows that go overhead and have recently swooped low, seeming to be interested in the arrival of the Goats, seeming to be, just more Willing to look down. and how i call them. how i hang laundry on the clothes line almost for them, how i wave and yell to them if they are high. and what it is i want.....is just that they might come here, for just a moment to light on the dead branches of the big Russian Olive, or on the fence, fence post. Just that. that it would be enough.
so, i put this note in with the cloth and stick and there is a great Wind doing what it does out there and i go out, to go to the post office to send this and as i am unlatching the gate, i for whatever reason, look to my right and then
up
and there, There on the top branch of the Russian Olive is
a crow.
a crow.
i stand there and see it. i watch it seeing me. seconds pass and then in a kind of slow motion, it's wings raise just barely and extend, just barely and Wind lifts it up and sails it off to the right, up and in the current....the crow making no effort at all and it is gone from my sight.
i stood there. hanging on to the cardboard envelope. not knowing what to do. feeling like i should fall to the ground or something, i should DO something.
but what i did is to continue through the gate and latch it closed and get into the car and head off for the Post Office. staring straight ahead. continuing. and i mailed it. and now it's a couple days later and i think as i did in that moment driving down the road, that That's also probably like how it is even when we are dying. When we somehow know we are about to exhale for the last time. and we
exhale.
we Just Go.
and i wasn't going to write this here. it seems so improbable. so surreal. But it happened.
it was no more, but no less.
