Previously

Alligator hunters know

the best way to get the big ones

is to imitate the distress calls

of the hatchlings.

Ants will sacrifice

their bodies to the flames

that threaten the colony.

Elephants visit

the graveyards

of their dead

and caress the bones.

I thought that twenty days

in the desert would suffice

for my contemplation

on these and other matters.

I'd sit beside a creosote bush

under the warm but weak

January sun at Furnace Creek.

Get in touch with God

and the Universe.

But I was wrong.

The weakness was my own.

The tab of orange sunshine

I'd brought along to facilitate

my meditations,

only allowed me to imagine

myself as a lizard

gazing out from his stony haven.

I could have done that at home.

Which was the actual nexus

of my discontent.

The weather turned.

A wind that never paused.

Sand and dust that soon

was caked in my long hair.

I borrowed some dish soap

from a family that looked at me

like I was nuts. And by the way

that was all the food I had,

a big bag of dried fruit and nuts.

I washed the grit out of my hair

in a sink in the campground restroom

and headed for the visitors center

to await the endless wind's surcease.

I must have watched the informative films

in the small theater there a dozen times.

Eventually I could quote the script exactly

drone on in that flat documentary

narrators style. About the geology,

the history and the mines.

The survival strategies

of flowering desert plants,

the tiny population of pupfish

in the Devil's Punchbowl,

and stranded pioneers.

Anything to fight the dribbling

hours and minutes while

the howling wind refused to die.

I sat down on a bench to watch

the families peering into

the glass encased exhibits

about borax mining

and the Devil's Cornfield

and a girl about my age sat down

beside me. We said hi, where you from,

are you bored? Then she asked me

if I wanted to make out.

We went into the theater

and waited for the lights to dim.

Kissed and stroked

until desire got so stoked

that we needed to find

a more private spot.

Her family was camping in a motor home,

no telling when they'd be back.

So I said, you wanna go to my campsite,

I have a tent and she eagerly agreed.

The wind was still like a dragon's

frozen breath and the dust still had teeth.

When we got to my camp,

she said, This is it?

My tent was just a thin black plastic tube.

Kind of like a extra large lawn and leaf trash bag

with a line of nylon rope strung though it

and lashed between two scruffy tamarisk trees.

Inside I had my army surplus

down mummy bag, which

was rated for sub freezing weather

but barely had room for one person to sleep,

let alone anything more adventurous.

She said, Oh. that's a chastity sack,

we gotta find something better than that.

But there wasn't so we walked

back to her family's motor home,

had one last goodnight kiss,

and promised to see each other

the next day.

They must have left before the sun rose.

The wind had finally calmed,

and a dawn of a different sort

arose within my mind,

that desert solitude in a wasteland

when the problem is loneliness,

is just a waste of time.

I could ponder about pachyderms

and alligators and the face of God

just as well back home.

And perhaps if I was lucky,

I'd find someone who shared

the same curiosity and desire.

A murder of crows

Mom found her in the classifieds.

Brought her home in a cardboard box.

Let me carry the box

from our Falcon station wagon

to the back yard patio.

I tipped it carefully onto it's side

and opened the top.

out hopped a crow.

She quickly skipped away

from my excited hands and eyes.

That's how I chose her name: Skippy.

I tried to get closer.

She cocked her head to look at me

and skipped crabwise into the garden

keeping a safe space between us.

I wanted to touch her glossy breast,

but that would take some trust I'd yet to earn,

no matter how much I yearned.

Skippy couldn't fly,

the tips of her flight feathers were clipped,

but she was much too quick

for a ten year old.

She explored our large back yard,

the ferns and rhododendrons,

the small fountain Dad had made

was soon a place to drink and bathe.

The house and yard 

were sheltered beneath the dome

of a four hundred year old oak.

Wild crows would come to perch in it

and talk to Skippy in their secret crow talk.

Crows have a bigger vocabulary

than you might think

if all you ever hear is caw caw caw.

They can even learn to speak

some human.

We taught her to say hello,

and she took it on herself

to learn a deep rich chuckle.

The one we did not intend

was when she learned to say,

shut up. Followed by the chuckle.

I didn't give up on my desire

to touch her. I just got patient.

Every day for a week

I lay on my belly in the family room

with the sliding door open.

She became curious enough to approach.

I kept my hands at my sides.

Let her get right up close to my face.

She allowed me to touch her

with the tip of my nose.

Two weeks later she let me

stroke her breast with my hand.

As soft as I imagined.

One night there was a commotion

outside in the back yard.

I couldn't hear it from my room

but Mom and Dad did.

They thought it was a cat.

Which Skippy had always been able

to handle, her beak was sharp and strong.

They went back to sleep.

In the morning, all that was left

on the backyard lawn was one wing,

a foot and a scattering of feathers.

That's when I learned what loss feels like.

When love is torn apart

and what remains

are scattered pieces.

No way to reassemble,

no way to turn back the clock

for even a day. Gone from all

but sweet memory.

Perhaps it was inevitable

that I would come to love

a woman who laughed

like a crow.

Back to standard time

A sky of brass

washed the crows

who watched the street

below the light poles

which soon shut off

for the day.

And venus gleamed

before the sun

washed out

her twinkle too.

I stood at the corner

waiting for the bus

to take the short hop

across the bay

then two long blocks

to enter the tunnel

that plunges under it.

Up the escalator

into the heart 

of downtown Oakland

where I now must

mend my own

while the sun does

what it wants unveiled today 

before the clock says

that it's time to descend

back under the bay

and climb the stairs

to my empty rooms

before the gloom of these

ever shortening days

sends the crows

back to their roosts.

where ever that may be.