Crow Abatement Program

I made about fifty photos of crows roosting in my neighborhood at dusk, and they're all crap. If you look at this one large and expand it, you might make out a thousand or so crows, but it's probably not worth it. The unimaginably wealthy business owners downtown have invested in everything from raptors to traps and noisemakers, and at least for tonight, they have forced the crows out of downtown and into my neighborhood. I welcome them, but I know they aren't happy about this.

Crows are intelligent, adaptable birds. They like to roost by the river. People with money and power think they can have everything their way. They've wrecked this planet and they have, at least for tonight, forced the crows out of their customary roosting place. I comfort myself that when the rich men and their money and power have wrecked life on this planet, what crows remain will roost wherever the hell they want to.

I believe I have posted part of this poem before now, but here I go again, Carl Sandberg's "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind."

And there are black crows
crying, 'Caw, caw,'
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold 
and the golden girls came singing:


We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.


The only singers now are crows crying, 'Caw, caw,'
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are...the rats...and the lizards.