This was published in the ezine "La Silencia"

Death on a Thursday Morning

Quiet, slow, almost listless: it’s Thursday morning and I’m walking to work. As I pass the schoolyard, I hear a weak squawk, a ruffle of feathers going still.
It is a crow lying on its back in the shady gutter, convulsing. I know that it is too late already. But still, I rush to the bird, touch its talon questioningly. It seems to know what I’m asking, and seems to reassure me that I won’t be scratched.
I pick up the crow by the legs, cradling its back, and lay it on the grass as gently as I can. The convulsions are strong. And I am no doctor.
But the bird doesn’t die. There are no wounds that I can find through the sweaty feathers. I stand it on its feet, hoping that perhaps the crow only is stunned from some fall. There is a squawk of pain; the bird is unable to support itself so I lay it back down.
On her way in to work, a matronly woman stops to ask me, in a thick New Orleans drawl, “Wha’s wrawn wid ’im?”
“I dunno. I just found him in the street.”
“Oh. Maybe a car hit ’im, den.”
And with that, I realize that maybe a car can save him. But mine is still at home, where I left it because I walk to work. I pick up the crow, say, “Hold on,” and I start walking. Fast. I try to run, but it shakes him so, that I must slow down again. If only I were stronger.
When I was very young, my father and I took our walk up to the elementary school. We strolled by my classroom, an annex building just before the playground and the track. Near the steps to my classroom’s door, I spotted a red hawk lying among the leaves in the gutter. He was young and smallish, I was able to carry him in my arms.
Dad and I hurried back to the house and to the car so that we could hurry to the vet. But all the while we were hurrying along, I think Dad knew.
The hawk died in my arms before we got to our street. I buried him in a pile of earth that later was incorporated into the sidewalk around that park, where my father and I walked until we moved away.
I whisper to the crow again, “Hold on, little guy,” but I remember, and I know I’m not going to make it. His convulsions have stopped and his body has stiffened. But his eyes still blink, somewhat inwardly, a muted screech still gasping from his beak. He’s still holding on.
I make it to my street, one of the very few places Uptown without enough trees to blot out the sky. And maybe that is why this poor old crow has been placed in my path. Maybe his soul couldn’t find the sun to wing on towards. As the sunlight fell on him, and he looked up at the spot of clear blue sky, his body shook a last time, his eyes seemed to shut from the inside, his body became rigid. We were right at the boneyard.
I bury him in my backyard, where there’s enough soil to hold him down the next time it floods. I’m grieving that I know no songs to sing for him. A good shaman would have spread his voice on the wind, a companion for the crow on his last journey. He leaves this world without ceremony, for I know none to make.
But I mourn for him. At work, I tell the first person I meet about him. I call my father, so much an old crow himself, and tell him about this one. My dad—more zen a man than most monks—vows to say a prayer for him, and I know that my father will do this. I vow to do the same.
This is it:
Crow
Watchful, ever present
friend
I have heard your calls all my life
And so, I answer.
As one of your kind cries his last
I bring his spirit to the sky
To soar once again
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