a moment in the day: crow

I get, wet, out of the shower in our new bathroom with the new blue paint and the new vanity and the new toilet and the new cabinet and the new floor. I throw on my old robe. Taking a nice, hot shower in the new house is wondering how much bigger that spot in the basement is now, that wide, dark spot where the water spreads out from the leak we discovered yesterday. It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm cleaning up after a morning of unpacking, organizing and cleaning in the kitchen, not to mention cooking up all the fresh greens in the refrigerator so we can freeze them since, yes, on this second official day in our new house, the fridge decided to die like the last of my dreams of financial security.

Through the window, two crows, one after the other, fly straight at me so that for a moment, here without my glasses on, I think at least one is going to land on my head. Then one, then two, they swoop up and land on the edge of the roof. My roof; what a strange thing. I put my glasses on in time to see one dip down from the house and land in the center of the backyard. Crows are odd creatures - so sleek, yet they walk like toddlers. She toddles through the sparse grass and willy nilly dandelions that will someday be a garden when we can afford it. Her head jerks and twitches as she looks for things to eat. Finding something I can't see, grabbing it in her beak, she flies up and lands on the fence that separates my yard from the neighbor's. Sits there for a minute. Surveying. A fence is such a different thing to a bird. A perch, a place to rest, as she looks around for where she wants to fly next.