The End of a Silence

THE END OF A SILENCE

I awoke to the sound of crows the other morning.  Two of them, at least. They cawed for a few minutes, and then fell silent; or flew away.

It’s been a rare sound in Woodlawn – or in the City – since the appearance of the West Nile virus 18 years ago.  I remember that summer, seeing a dead crow lying on the grass, and thinking I had never noticed a dead crow before.  The next day I thought it odd; the dead crow seemed to be in a different place.  And over the next few days it became clear that they were dying in great numbers.  The sky began to seem empty, and quiet, as the birds fell silent, and fell.

I thought of crows in June, at the Tower of London, as I watched the ravens. (See the forthcoming Chapter Six, “I journeyed to London, to the timekept city, where the river flows with foreign flotations”).  There is a legend, although apparently of recent origin, so perhaps legend is the wrong word, that if the ravens leave the Tower, the Tower will fall.  I worried: would The Bronx, or Woodlawn, fall as the crows fell?

In the far-distant past, I had a job administering reading tests for a remedial reading program.  The students were to read a passage and then answer questions about it. The test-giver would read the opening lines aloud, and at the bottom of the page, the students were to turn the page and keep reading silently.  One version began:

If human beings wore wings and feathers, very few would be clever enough to be crows. Whether in the wild state or kept as a pet, the crow is a genius in feathers and an endlessly astonishing bird. A crow kept by a lady in Stewart, Ohio, was so dainty it insisted on washing worms before it would eat them. A Staten Island crow not only ….. [turn the page and continue reading]

Some day I’ll have to look into what the Staten Island crow did.  I assume a Bronx crow could do it better.  And some day soon I’ll have to track down a copy of the reading test so I can cite it properly. I’ve [mis]quoted the passage here from memory.  Henry Ward Beecher wrote “If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows [1]”, but I doubt if he was up on his Stewart Ohio and Staten Island crows.

I like crows.   I hope the silence of the crows is over.

Long silences tend to get longer.  Last January Phyllis assigned me my new year’s resolution: I was to write. It’s been nearly 10 months. I have written.

[1] Quoted in Marzluff, John M., In the Company of Crows and Ravens, Yale University Press, 2005.