Poetry

The Crow Dance

Finding the balance

Pockets. That’s where they dance, the crows and the hawks, when the Santa Ana’s blow in.

Perfectly balanced between updraft and down, they find the sweet spot, where they don’t have to flap a wing.

A tuck there, a twist here and they’re floating in perfect stillness amidst the billowing wind.

How fun it must be to possess that freedom, as if gravity had just vanished.

And then they’re off, like rockets, gliding on a mini jet stream, ribboning over the riparian corridor, threading through the willows for a moment before they return to find it again, that place of no-motion.

A party with fancy dancing, that’s what it looks like to me, as I’m standing, stopped on the trail, feet planted in the dirt, watching the birds, and wishing I could join them in that pocket of air.

While mountain-biking last week, I found myself utterly transfixed by a murder of crows riding the wind. The Santa Ana’s, sometimes called the “Devil Winds,” had blown in, and the birds had found one of those spots of stillness amidst the violence of the air. I hopped off my bike for a couple of minutes just to watch their joy as they hovered, twisting and flapping just a bit here and there to maintain their equilibrium. Then, in a flash, they’d streak out of the top of that belt of quietude and rocket off across the bone-dry Southern California landscape and through the yellowing willow trees edging the nearby creek bed. And before you knew it, they were back with their friends in that same little pocket of quiet air. It looked like so much fun. I really wished that I could join them.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

After writing this poem, I came across J.D. Harms call for crow poems in Scrittura and it seemed appropriate to place this poem amongst the many other, lovely crow poems collected there.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed my musings and photos. You might also like:

Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.