Becoming
and Embrace
The branches
are ice, and I am heavier than the crow. I am the weight of more than
a hundred crows. Suddenly, I can talk crow. Look at her, I tell it:
it's me, as a small child. I'm wearing a blue jacket and pink gloves.
Look. See, my face is nearly the color of my gloves.
In the
child's miracle, it has to do with wanting. The snow becomes an angel.
The child and the angel are one. The angel is not flying heavenward,
leaving. The crow and the angel remain together.
Piled
in, close for comfort sisters, mother, father. Vases of flowers in their
hands, steadied between their feet: the grandmother has died. They are
going home in the dark, want to sleep in their own beds. In the morning,
they will sing Amazing Grace, as they drape the casket with cloth.
In the morning, she will return.
It has
to do with the familiar. Even then, in the car that night, I was a child
held by the silence of five adults. Crow, are you there? Were you in
the car that night, were you seated next to an angel?
Come spring,
I will leave. No, I will leave the angel in the snow, except for a single
flake of wing sheared off like mica. I will leave the crow in the tree,
except for a single feather selected for its shade of black. I will
cover them with cloth. Silence will sing to them.
Copyright © 2005 Katie Clare