I like this, Joel. And I really appreciate your research into the crow. I already knew about the ‘murder’ of crows because I saw a documentary about crows and how they can recognize human faces and ‘remember’ the person. They are a very intelligent bird. You are right about the harsh and raucous noise of their gravelly voices joined together. It is alarming. I live in the forest and that grating chorus is absolutely an alert about danger of eagle robbing nest or of raccoon climbing the nest tree, or other predators or trouble in the jungle. Your piece here is very curious to me, in that I can’t tell if you write of their awfulness or write of their connection to nature and ‘OUR’ awfulness. Calling out a name we don’t understand and us as fools seems a plus for the crows. Poisoning the sky with their wings seems a plus for the human. But best of all….I REALLY liked that last stanza: “…and the crows they murdered me/because although I was a witness/I refused to see/“. Plus for the crow, minus for the human. Very mindful piece of writing, Joel. ~~ djl
The term "murder" was used to describe a flock of crows as far back as the 15th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Here's a spine-chilling version from 1475: "A morther of crowys.")
The OED suggests this is an allusion to 'the crow's traditional association with violent death' or 'its harsh and raucous cry.' If you've ever heard dozens of agitated crows in full cry, it really does sound as if they're yelling bloody murder.
This usage, which apparently died out after the 1400s, was revived in the 20th century. The first modern citation in the OED comes from 1939, but the usage was undoubtedly popularized by its appearance in 'An Exaltation of Larks' (1968), a compendium of "nouns of multitude" by James Lipton.
The songs and art in this book are about our collective emergence after the pandemic and trauma of the last few years - comprised of 5 collections: World as Refuge, Where We Live, In Our Hands, Rhythms of Change and What We See & Sow.
This book represents a thirty-day period of my poetry journal. Each poem addresses
the dominant thoughts occupying my mind during the early morning hours of a given
day.
Questions, unquestioned discoveries, and answers in parable and rhyme…. This collection records a journey starting with a 1960s retrospective and the first man on the moon, moving to a new millennium welcomed in with a terrorist spin, family crises,
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The term "murder" was used to describe a flock of crows as far back as the 15th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Here's a spine-chilling version from 1475: "A morther of crowys.")
The OED suggests this is an allusion to 'the crow's traditional association with violent death' or 'its harsh and raucous cry.' If you've ever heard dozens of agitated crows in full cry, it really does sound as if they're yelling bloody murder.
This usage, which apparently died out after the 1400s, was revived in the 20th century. The first modern citation in the OED comes from 1939, but the usage was undoubtedly popularized by its appearance in 'An Exaltation of Larks' (1968), a compendium of "nouns of multitude" by James Lipton.