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.