Crow Woman

From Royal B. Farnum et al, Practical Drawing,

Art Education Edition, Book Four,

Practical Drawing Company, Chicago and Dallas, 1925.

There is a large field that I pass on my daily commute with my son, and in it are several of what we call "crow trees." We have been fascinated watching the antics of the crows gathered in the trees this winter. They stand out against the white snow. My son noticed that the crows look like leaves on the bare trees, and it seems like such an apt image. Crows seem like hardy survivors, a sign of survival in the winter.

Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying, Macmillan, 1998.

Crows are smart birds and very social, and it's hardly surprising that there are so many legends and literary references to crows and ravens. The Lenni Lenape have a story about Rainbow Crow, who made the long journey to the Great Spirit in the heavens to bring fire to the other animals so that they wouldn't freeze in the winter. In the process, Rainbow Crow's feathers were blackened and beautiful voice roughened into a hoarse caw. Two characters from Canadian writer Charles de Lint's mythic universe, drawn from Native American tales, are the crow girls, Maida and Zia. In the opening scene from Someplace to Be Flying, the Crow Girls step in to help Hank, whose own rescue mission has just gone badly wrong:


"He knew a momentary sense of relief--someone else was playing Good Samaritan tonight--except there was only a girl standing there on the roof of the cab. A kid. Skinny and monochrome and not much to her: raggedy blue-black hair, dark complexion, black clothes, and combat boots. There seemed to be a cape fluttering up behind her like a sudden spread of black wings, there one moment, gone the next, and then she really was just a kid, standing there, her weight on one leg, a switchblade held casually in a dark hand."


Since the birds are such social creatures and look at everything with so much intelligence, it's easy to anthropomorphize them. [Edit: It strikes me rereading these stories that crows have a contradictory combination of characteristics: strong but with an air of menace about them; brave and social but also combative and independent.] Here's a poem I wrote playing around with this idea and what the crow means to me.

Winter Crow

Crow is strong.
She owns the winter.
Grasps the curved bare branches of the sumac tree
with her arthritic claws.
Pecks at the tight red clusters of seed cones
until they are bare.

Her beadlike obsidian eyes see everything.
She is calculating:
the geometry of the winter’s low, angled light,
the number of seeds remaining on the tree,
the pecking order of the other crows.

She preens her black feathers.
She sees that they shine with a purple and blue iridescence.
She feels lit from within her hollow bones, a cold fire that burns like the center of ice.

She is silent most of the time, brooding.
And then erupts in a series of throaty caws to warn her murderous tribe.
The others join the chorus, a cacophony of crow sounds.
Not a symphony like the chickadees chirping in the spring sun.
It is the harsh sound of winter.
It carries through the bare branches and over the snowy ground.

She launches herself gracefully, broad chest thrust forward,
Unlike her ungainly waddle across the ground.
Soars low over the road past the always-green bristles of the pine
and then to her nest, a sprawling clutter of sticks wedged up high between branches.
It is lined with shiny treasures, hair, and bits of string.
She picks up a tangled necklace and tastes the tarnished metal,
a sharp note of grief.

I'd be interested to hear if there are particular birds or other creatures that evoke powerful emotions like this for you.