a large crow greets me each morning in polite and consequential tones he’s laconic but well versed in matters of the feather the intricacies of nesting rituals of blues and celestial hues and generally, all things volatile he lectures the constellations of starlings he tells me, on the rhythm of cloud banks and the vicissitudes of atmospheric humidity he mediates the never-ending quarrels within charms of hummingbirds counsels the occasional Old World sparrow on the virtues of millet, milo and wheat and regularly addresses the high council of eagles on concerns lofty and delicate this morn he gazes at the sky and warns: a storm is coming the likes of which we’ve never seen ”I can smell it” he says, turning his head in that peculiar fashion that makes me feel orthogonal to his line of vision ”and time grows short”, he adds in his punctilious manner he explains ’tis proper to convey a biography before parting, and parting he must for he and his kind shall soon seek refuge — bids for me to follow suit as a mere hatchling with naught more than the sparse down on his hide as is typical of these altricial creatures he was unusual, already keen on protocol as a nestling he was the cohesion of his siblings instigating curiousity in the nearby nests with perspectives explicable only by flight as a fledgling his renown was already such as to attract visits from the greater family the ravens, rooks and choughs the juvenile crow quickly distinguished himself as a messenger, in the service of the eagles with the aplomb of Huginn and Muninn however, what earned him great deference was prescience, the kind accorded only to the legendary three-eyed crows and sought he, harbour in the stronger tree that rooted in the dark places of the earth and darkness was his cloak and his shield and his mother’s milk and darkness comes, with the storm he has foreseen it [22-III-2012]