16 January 23 Feathers of Impermanence / The Good the Bad and the Ugly

The Good Flight, Murder, Flame, and an Unkindness

Most of them are gone. A few stay, keeping us company through the cold season with their varied, wild sounds and songs. A few, like Corvus Corax, mate about halfway into winter. Yes, the Common Raven even thrives in winter, gliding on a three-to-five-foot wingspan, living for ten-to-fifteen years, and whose population is increasing across the Northern Hemisphere. With a winged lifespan more than most feathered tribes, a clutch of three to seven eggs each year and with incubation only eighteen days, this feathered tribe has several survival characteristics operative. In addition, both parents attend to the babies until they fledge at five-to-seven weeks. 

I’ve written often about Ravens; in fact, they are my spirit totem. (That’s a long and beautiful story.) But my fondness for this sleek, black Corvid is diverting my attention from other winter wonder birds. Woodpeckers continue their drilling: the Downy, the Hairy, the Red-Bellied, and the impressive, rarely seen, red-streaked Pileated. These and others variably choose migration, seeming to follow food, temperature, open water, and their own hearts’ navigation. In short, their lives are precarious, impermanent.

Speaking of impermanent, I hope what this post and its poem lack in length will find its breadth in a common yet mysterious poem. I am remiss not to include “snowbirds,” but they really don’t fit the type of flyer we are interested in.

Here you go . . . 

Feathers of Impermanence

Snow ridges border road sides

Deer sprawls on bloody winter drifts

Two Eagles’ and Six Ravens’ sturdy beaks jab-scrape her hide 

Eight birds compete to gouge her clouded eyes 

Wandering winter wind ruffles feathers as the carnivores feast on impermanence 

These four-season scavengers collide with disappearing appearances

Temperatures drop like pearls of blood

Overnight, winds defer to winter

Thin ice shapes wings’ leading edges

while snowstorms wail their excesses

Eagles and Ravens, turn to the blusters

gusts buffet feathers as birds go on feasting

In this colder season of scant gathering, calls and hoots often stop

except the Ravens – the windy Ravens – who soar and hop

Gone long before snows, the rootless, nomadic tribes 

quit nests, nudge reluctant fledglings into fallen-open skies

pitiful foraging has pushes them farther south

where opportunities enter ravenous mouths

but not the Eagles, not the Ravens who devise

and are wisest but stingy with their advice

Blue Jays make migration choices

Announce their staying with piercing voices

They will stay for suet cakes and seeds

sunflowers and mealworms can satisfy their needs

shrewd blue jays rarely stay too long

voices fading as they wing to other nosh and homes

Canada geese stretch ash-gray wings

Honk their opinions about all things

arrow south in a hundred vees

thick with honks that croak a singularity

No voice on Earth can divert their south-bound flight

nor dissuade the wingbeats’ incessant beating beyond the night

.

Great Blue Herons unfurl slate-gray sails wing-on-wing

smaller convoys track to southern things

crests blown back against the northern snows

No shape or shadow can discourage their rasping cadence 

Or halt undivided migrations nor shake their balance 

Credit: Becky Jones

Wild Swans in purest plumage trumpet in hundreds

their shimmering austral passage

a northern exodus of avian monks in snowy robes

streaming out of cloisters of La Grande Chartreuse

as if god had finally told the truth

The flitting migrants ceaselessly leaving and endlessly arriving

Others always– and their few confrères – laugh at impermanence

rogues who stay behind amid the winter barrens’ impertinence

in the Great Whiteness where clouds float on evergreens

the few clear-hearted ones that can bear unbroken suchness

and who know ever-changing wisdom in their native oneness 

The prescient Ravens know it all – ‘tis the origin of why they laugh

Ever watchful for a stake in a meal, they parlay with wolves and make their pacts

This is why Great Odin kept two Ravens perched and watching 

from his thunderous shoulders – flying out and back 

Attend the precocious Ravens

unafraid of Eagles’ secrets whistling through their pinions

enchant and whisper the certainty of their void-black opinions

that is, to have the sense to cackle and the wit to play

to taunt grounded dogs who run every time to catch them

as if suddenly north was south and hounds could fly away

Background

This poem is old and new. I first wrote it in 2018, then rewrote it in 2020. A year ago, I had at it again for reading at a Wednesday evening “Penned Poets” group that I rarely miss. So much original, fine work within this gathering of about twelve sincere poets, touched here and there by their muses when they are within reach. 

A Note on a Murder of Crows*

No license is required to hunt crows in Minnesota. They may be taken by legal firearms (shotgun not larger than 10-gauge, rifle, or handgun), bow and arrow, or by falconry. There are no daily or possession limits, and shooting hours are 1/2 hr. before sunrise to sunset.

Protection of an Unkindness of Ravens**

Common ravens are classified as a migratory bird species and are protected by federal and, in most cases, state laws. In the United States, ravens may only be lethally removed or live trapped with a permit issued by the USFWS. Occasionally, an additional permit is required from the state wildlife management agency.

Then there’s: a flame of eagles, a parliament of owls, a bouquet or shimmer of hummingbirds, a party [of sixteen?] blue jays, and the secretive, 12-pound pileated woodpecker who is affectionately called a wood hen; they do not have a group name as far as my research shows.

Exploration 1: Do you notice an increase or decrease in our winter bird populations in recent years? Any ideas why either may be true?

Exploration 2: Do our winter birds convey any spiritual information for us, especially in the cold season? What about the Holy Ghost in dove form?

Exploration 3: What do you make of the fact that Ravens can talk, an ability only a few birds have?

Exploration 4: What is a group of human beings called? How about human females? Males? This does not count spouses individually. Come on you sparse, perpetually migrating readers. Get creative!

FLY HIGH! FORAGE WELL!

* There is a folktale that crows will gather and decide the capital fate of another crow.

** Similarly, "an unkindness of ravens" could stem from the misguided 19th-century belief that the birds were not the most caring of parents, sometimes expelling their young from their nests to fend for themselves way before they are ready.