7 Crows

I saw 7 black crows this morning, sitting in a bare black tree against a gray and misty sky. This is clearly portentous, although not exactly clear. I tried counting, but I couldn't remember what seven crows mean. I was kind of hoping it meant a hot date, but it turns out it's either a secret, a witch or the Devil himself, who I already dated. And the secret, bah, not in this electronic age or a witch, hell, this is Asheville: half my friends are witches. So now I have to go off to work with that itching ominous feeling - there's been an omen! A prophecy! Of. . . something very small, like the light turning at the right or wrong time. That's the problem with prophecies: they're so opaque and you never know exactly what they're getting at.

I don't know why writers, me included, always feel compelled to note that the crows are black. It's not like crows come in any other color, at least not on this boring bloody planet. If I'd seen shocking pink crows, now, or lime green ones, or yellow with black checks, well, then that would be an Omen. And a black tree: most trees are, after all, black a little before sunrise, and it's December, and the branches are bare. Actually, I love that. I love bare branches against a winter sky - it's just so much more, I don't know, aesthetically pleasing. Calligraphic. As are crows, come to think of it, when they're moving across the sky and even when they're hunched against it, like this guy, whose picture I took another early morning in the same neighborhood. He's my local omen crow, I guess.