The crow's on the edge of the neighbours house wake up second. The lyric songbirds greet the first pink light. On mornings when anxiety chases to dreams from my head I watch the light in the bedroom shift. I feel the cat against my toes, she is not interested in leaving and pays no attention to a shift from gray to blue. She only hopes the child will remain in his own bed and will not disturb her kingdom.
The songbirds greet each other with the call for breakfast, Small moths I expect as our house is filling up with them. Are they like cherries to the bug eaters? A rare, once a year treat? In abundance for only a week or so?
The crows call out for a strong audience, 30 minutes after the light shifts. I can't hear them and not think of Canada. I think of that winter and think of that first fall in Toronto. Crows and winter, I suspect I'll always link them. Survival, I expect is how I see them.
Back to Canada this Friday, a life revisited. I am different now. My out and about's are changed, My ehs hidden from view. Will they welcome me back to the table? Will they be able to tell I'm different? Will I only be allowed to talk about American politics and be drawn into snobbish tirades? Or will my image of art projects and beach walks be realized in my heart pieced back together again.
Will Marian be okay? Can I only write about crows, when what I want to be doing the shouting from the edge of the roof that "it's stupid my friend has cancer" and I'm not sure a blender and a knitted breast is really going to help. I'm sad, enraged and worried. She's inviting people to give her gifts for her altar and objects for her spell. I just want to use words like love and run my fingers over pink cashmere and learn to say areola. Her mother, my mother, now her. Cancer should be a four letter word it shouldn't be the same length as death. I won't mouth that word again. I'll only say love over and over and over. I'll only sing the lyrics of songbirds and I won't do the plaintiff cry of those black winged crows this time. I'll call the pink light pray for my friend.