Oh what a great delight,
Truly a wonderful sight,
At breakfast this morning
To spot—guess what?—a crow!
It hopped about on the low wall,
Caw-caw-caw, on and on it went
Non-stop, like a cranky baby
Demanding immediate and full attention.
Soon, it was joined by its cousins,
And to entertain themselves they put up
A grand hop-and-caw party,
You should have seen how happy they were
Dancing and singing in causeless mirth!
I can’t remember when last it was
That I spotted a crow, you see.
There must have been many once
In the ‘great city’, ‘tech-hub’, where I live,
But now that the trees have been bulldozed
To make way for giant towers
—of glass, concrete, dark and ugly—
The crows rendered homeless might have collectedly decided
That it was really high time to flee,
Although some few idlers or stragglers,
Or those too old or infirm to migrate,
Might have decided to remain.
Additionally, now that the mountains of garbage,
Where men once searched for rags,
Vying with dogs looking for bones,
Have been replaced by smart plastic vats,
Carted away in trolleys, trucks and trailers
(Big corporations taking over ‘little’ men’s livelihoods),
Food in the ‘great city’
Is a really big issue for crows (and former ‘rag-pickers’), I suppose.
And that’s possibly why
In the great ‘city’ now
You’ll rarely get to see them.
You just might spot a couple if you’re lucky, though,
But that isn’t likely every day.
And so, this very morning,
In a distant village by the sea,
Where I’ve fled to from the ‘great city’
For a break well-deserved,
It was, as you can well imagine,
A truly amazing sight,
To see crows after ages
—Not one, not two but many—
Having a jolly good party!
I must apologize, dear crow,
There was a time I used to think perhaps
You were a pest, ugly, unwanted
Because of your voice and your hue,
Blindly believing white’s good, black’s bad
(Man’s colour-based prejudice
Doesn’t spare birds and beasts, you see,
Forcing them, too, into rigid hierarchies,
So that your darker cousin, the pure-black raven,
Is branded Satan’s agent, harbinger of tragedy,
And you, a shade lighter, only a shade less evil,
While the white swan’s regarded
As the very epitome of grace and purity)
But now that I know, O crow,
That God is all there is,
And that Nothing Exists but Him,
It means that you are, in a sense,
Our very Maker Himself
In your particular garb
That He’s assumed for His cosmic drama
(Just as with every other being and thing
In this infinite, ever-expanding universe
—His very own body),
I bow down to you most reverently,
Touch your feet—if you’ll please let me—
Seek your pardon, and speak of how glorious you truly are.
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