Flight

It was a hot summer day and I was about mid-way through my daily walk.

I paused in the shade near the corner, to look around and cool down a bit. I had just been standing there a few moments when it caught my eye: The shadow of something ... moving across the lawn of a nearby house.

As I followed the movement of that shadow, my gaze shifted slowly upward to the source. It turned out to be a crow, moving slowly, gracefully toward a perch high in a tree across the street.

It was quiet as it flew, then sat there looking around ... "judge-like," it appeared to me.

When I got home, I once again sat at the kitchen table and started writing. I had the makings of a poem.

Eventually, after several revisions, it became a poem ... and then, in time, was published.

The poem:

FLIGHT

The crow's shadow folds
and unfolds diagonally
across the lawn, up the fence
and away, almost before
I can fix my gaze on
that true flight taking place
well above the rooted houses.

Then silently he courses
toward a high, unobstructed
limb on which to sit
looking down, judge-like in his
dark robe, at the rest of us.

© 1996

(originally published in Read, America!)

Today's word: judge-like