Crows and Mary Oliver's Poem 'Crows'

There's something about crows. Especially Ireland's brand of crow which is really a rook or a jackdaw. There used to be rowdy crows hunched together, being observational, on top of the enormous fir tree in our farmyard in Donegal. The tree was opposite the old barn and the abandoned cottage where we were brought up. The crows perseverance in making nests in the barn involved them dropping small sticks down the chimney or an opening in the roof of the barn, to land, or not land, on one particular rafter beneath the chimney pot. 

After a long spell of hit and miss, they would eventually get their nest built on that spot. All over the ground beneath the rafter, there would be their many failed attempts at building nests. Year after year, the collection of sticks would build up, a messy mound of bungled endeavours. It was an incredible sight to see.

I remember the first time my father took me to the barn to show me the perfectly made nest on the rafter and the hundreds of sticks below the nest that came to nothing, lying flopped and anti-climatic on the barn floor in spots where when the sun sneaked in, the dust mites rose.

On one other occasion years ago, I opened the barn door in mid-summer and a whole murder of trapped crows bolted and swooped out the barn door, their wings bumping and overlapping each other in haste, emitting impatient caws, rambling squealing and gutteral croaks as they took wing to the top of the fir tree to be greeted by the boisterous wing-whacking and the croaky delight of their fellow crows.  

The key had been missing to the barn for the past few years and I hadn't had a chance to go in there. This summer there weren't any crows at all to be seen on the fir tree nor in the surroundings. 

It felt weird and hostile not having crows around. I missed how they appeared to keep their sharp eyes on our comings and goings and how they rambled out their sequence of caws and rattles and clicks, improvising on the wing, being bare-faced cheeky and witnessing, all in one. Crows that would look down on us, crows appearing to tut and gossip and take-a-hand. It felt like they cared, like they knew something about us, like they'd been summing us up through-out the years. 

I've been known to smuggle out leftover chips from the Tasty Tucker Takeaway to the crows. They'd swoop and fuss, even when I was caught red-handed by our steadfast, elderly neighbour, walking in our yard, keeping an eye on things. He said 'There's been a terrible invasion of crows recently. Crows can be a nuisance at the best of times. You wouldn't need to feed them as then we'd be tortured by them.'

This summer my brother sawed the padlock on the barn door to be able to get entry. There weren't any crows inside nor were there crows waiting on the fir tree. The sticks were still there, covering an old bicycle, right up to the handlebars and shrouding the steel blades of an old rusty plough where just the edge of the top part peeped through.

The crows departure might tied down to no one living full time in our cottage any more. Since mum left us last winter, there's no one for them to watch over. There are no carers' cars pulling in and pulling out, no sense of anything to surmise about and no chance at all for scraps. I'm wondering if the many years of nest building has come to a close or will the crows come back again one day? 

Crows by Mary Oliver

In Japan, in Seattle, In Indonesia—there they were—

each one loud and hungry,
crossing a field, or sitting
above the traffic, or dropping

to the lawn of some temple to sun itself
or walk about on strong legs,
like a landlord. I think
they don’t envy anyone or anything—

not the tiger, not the emperor,
not even the philosopher.
Why should they?
The wind is their friend, the least tree is home.

Nor is melody, they have discovered, necessary.
Nor have they delicate palates;
without hesitation they will eat
anything you can think of—

corn, mice, old hamburgers—
swallowing with such hollering and gusto
no one can tell whether it’s a brag
or a prayer of deepest thanks. At sunrise, when I walk out,

I see them in trees, or on ledges of buildings,
as cheerful as saints, or thieves of the small job
who have been, one more night, successful—
and like all successes, it turns my thoughts to myself.

Should I have led a more simple life?
Have my ambitions been worthy?
Has the wind, for years, been talking to me as well?
Somewhere, among all my thoughts, there is a narrow path.

It’s attractive, but who could follow it?
Slowly the full morning
draws over us its mysterious and lovely equation.
Then, in the branches poling from their dark center,

ever more flexible and bright,
sparks from the sun are bursting and melting on the birds’ wings,
as, indifferent and comfortable,
they lounge, they squabble in the vast, rose-colored light.

Published in the print edition of the New Yorker September 25, 2000, issue.

Mary Oliver won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for her poetry.