"If you like quietly in bed in the very early morning, in the half-light before time begins, and listen carefully, the language of crows is easy to understand. 'Here I am.' That's really all there is to say and we say it again and again." – Louise Jenkins, from "The Language of Crows"







Eagle Eye

What had been high marsh is now slowly marching waves of water through trees and over tin signs. Every floating cluster of spring limbs a refuge – an otter hunched up over little stand of bent cattails nibbling, five feet away from the kayak, a green stalk peppered with duckweed. One unrhythmic paddle stroke and a stick thin heron, blending against an overhanging willow, rises up and careens west against some unseen thrust of wind. Carp smack their way out of a new impoundment, lowering their dorsal fins flat against the surface then back in to swirl around the pool gauging the warmth of the sunlight. I flip both blades one more time for traction between trees that are usually above ground and display fishing lures caught in the side of their trunks like a dazzling brocade and look up to see the keeper of things – old eagle eye, poised like a brown garment, shaped like shield, motionless, except for a white head that rotates, bent forward a little bit, looking down at me, considering me as something likely sillier than nothing as upriver a pulse of the flood released over the spillway and soon here will be swimming in riches.