The Guidance of Two Crows

 

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Two crows fly over me while I sit on the 2^nd floor balcony.

One after another they go, cawing, but not in answer to each other.

Instead, they seem to be squawking at me, complaining of my gab and my loitering.

“Get with it,” they seem to be saying, “You haven’t a hermit’s excuse to hold back.”

 

I admit it.  I am one of a class of people who entangle themselves in social emptiness.

We avoid vapor and dark, sleep through sunrise and sunset, and then cry at gaps in our thinking.

If only we followed the call of the wild into forests and grasses and sunsets.

If only [we] bequeathed ourselves to the dirt to grow from the grass [we] love.

 

Wait!  Time enough to die.  For now, let’s love life.  Love trees, lakes, streams, and open waters.

Let’s turn away from time wasted and attend to places and people that use time gratefully.

The words we find there will feed us and will be worthy of passing on.

The words we find there may drip away until only essential ones are left.

 

The crows call us to be hermits if we must, but to get on with it, gracefully or not.

We may think we are untranslatable, but the words will fly to those who need them.

[They] may hardly know who [we] are or what [we] mean, and we might not know either.

But we must hear the universe and trust the call.  Keep encouraged.  And hear the crows caw.

 

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For Sumana's prompt "Taking Lines."  The italicized lines above are from Part 52 of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

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© 2026 Susan L. Chast