The purple-gray sky is spitting cold rain
but my eyes are consumed with the crows
One by one
then score by score
then gross by gross
Blackening the sky
Deafening my ears
Enamoring my spirit
Now filled with crowful delight
I spin my body to watch them swirling in
from east north west south
20,000 roosting downtown
20,000 beautiful black creatures
20,000 maligned messengers
Tomorrow the war begins
Strobes and lasers will light the skies
False corvid distress calls will echo from roving vans
Attempts to murder the murder will rage for days
The intrusion of wildness into concrete and steel, libeled
And having marveled at the crows coming home to roost
I think they may be watching us do the same.
—
Pamela Norton Reed is CEO of a nonprofit conservation organization where she focuses on environmental justice and nature equity while inspiring people to act on behalf of our planet. Through her poetry and prose, she explores the connections between the beauty of the natural world and the realities of our modern world.
