Poetry On Odyssey: Murdered Crow

I'm in Colorado for a couple months this winter and have been spending a lot of time sitting in a window seat resting my soul and breathing in nature.

The other morning I watched a fox play with the deer in the yard, his red fur streaking across the snow. There's a little black squirrel that comes by pretty often, little tufts of fur sticking up from his ears. And of course there are always deer in the yard, anywhere from two to ten wandering around looking for grass underneath the snow.

However, a deer was found nearby eaten by a mountain lion. They said you know because mountain lions always eat the lungs and heart first. I have a chihuahua and a puppy, so of course for the rest of the day I was cautiously walking outside with them, making sure there weren't any mountain lions trying to eat them.

Later that day I went out for lunch with my mom. We got back an hour or two later. I opened the back door to let the dogs out and instead was hit by a cloud of black feathers and the sight of a bloody crow on the step. Only the wings were left and a thin bone connecting them.

Of course the sight was terrifying and eerie, but also oddly poetic. I've always found something poetic about crows in general, and crow wings next to piles of blood in the snow and feathers blowing in the wind? It was straight out of the scribbling of Edgar Allen Poe.

A murder of crows
and a murdered crow—
I shiver to cries
from the trees.

There's blood in the earth
and feathers in wind.
Even death
couldn't hinder their flight.