I’ve been seeing a lot of crows lately. They seem to congregate wherever I go, silent sentinels in the trees around my cottage. In the morning, they rise up on black wings, cawing loudly, as my retriever, Sam, bursts out of the door in chase. She tries to keep them away, leaping into the air as if to fly after them, but we both know that it is futile. They will return again in the evening to resume their silent vigil.
They keep watch over my dying. Though mine is not a physical death, they still smell it. They taste the smoke from the pyre within. Like black-suited pallbearers at a funeral, they wait to consume the dross and to see, perhaps to carry away, the shiny thing that remains.
The presence of these dark sentinels honors me. They are testimony to the corpse fast growing cold in my mind, to the ashes of the burning smeared on the forehead of my soul, and to the winged creature which will soon rise up to fly with them in the morning as Sam rushes out to chase them again.
February 27, 1995
