An Unkindess of Ravens

October crept in while I slept. It painted the sky a sad winter gray as if to warn me, or taunt me, that winter is approaching fast. I look out my kitchen window, this cold, gray October morning, and see a flock of birds – ravens actually – circling around above the woods behind my house.

I’m fascinated. I start thinking — “A murder of crows.” “A gaggle of geese.” “A pride of lions”. “A troop of monkeys.” This leads me to wonder if they have a name for a flock of ravens. I look it up. I find a group of ravens is called an “Unkindness of ravens.” I wonder why. Ravens are archetypically cast as a symbol of death and a bad omen.

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only 
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
Till I scarcely more than muttered,—”Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

I’m sipping yesterday coffee heated in the microwave while watching an unkindness of ravens circling. Circling. Circling. A foreboding feeling is creeping over me and I am not sure if it is caused by watching the unkindness of ravens or by the prescient sky. It doesn’t matter. I watch the day unfold though my kitchen window.

Spring and summers memories cloud and streak the window;  I add “wash windows” to my growing to-do list. I watch the birds circling and the clouds sliding across the October sky.

When I was younger, much younger than I am now, October was a time of clear blue skies – or what I used to call “nitrogen-blue skies” which I snatched from something the famous astrophysicist once said. Nitrogen-blue skies, I think. How can I change so much? I wonder.

October once resplendent in its bright autumn garb glimmering beneath nitrogen-blue skies, has turned into this? A dark gray and sad reminder that winter will soon kill the green and living things and leave me nothing to look at but a woeful landscape of dark-skeleton trees and splotches of dirty snow.

An unkindness of ravens and solemn gray sky sink deep into my soul and wake my reality from the place where I hide it. The ravens, the sky, the time of year all reaching deep into that hiding place and pulling out the reality that I try so desperately to hide from myself. They throw it in my face and make me look at things I don’t want to look at and have almost always, been able to avoid.

An unkindness of ravens indeed.

The steel-gray sky is the perfect background for the dark sad birds circling.

I don’t want to look reality in the eye, so I walk to my computer and look up “ravens”. I learn that some scientists consider them the smartest of all birds. They do well around humans, particularly in rural settings. It rare to see more than two ravens together. Odd. There are five or six circling around over the woods, or circling around something in the woods. My mind is now racing imagining what that something may be. I am pretty sure its something dead, something possibly rotting. It makes me think of vultures, but these birds are not vultures, they are ravens – an undkindness of ravens harbingers now of the unkindness of days soon to come.

What happened to me? Where have I gone? What has time done to me?

The first days of October used to be happy days – days of apple cider, donuts, splendidly-colored autumn trees, football, clear blue days and starry, frosty nights. This morning all I can think of is the death and dark that winter will soon bring.

I think about the future. I think about the end of winter, the first green shoots of life springing up through the frozen ground in March. I think about tulips, and daffodils, and magnolias, and lilacs and the trees budding green. And for a moment I’m lost in my thoughts that spring will bring hope and life and warm soft breezes that will lead me to warm, sunny days of summer. But the unkindness of ravens and the slate skies toss reality in my face, the reality that I try so hard to keep hidden. They make me look.

I see both a mirror and door that opens to the future. I am looking in the mirror for I have no choice, but I will not open that door. Nothing can make me turn that doorknob. Nothing can open that door – not the unkindness of ravens, not the dull sad skies, not the chilly autumn wind. I do not open that door. I finally manage look away from the mirror.

I watch the unkindness of ravens flying away. The wind is ripping holes in the gray sky and patches of blue open across the sky.

I am not what I used to be, but I am not what I’m going to be. The season of death and frozen days is coming and I am not ready for it. I once reveled in the white cold days of winters. I used to love walking through woods on a snowy evening. I used to love being cold and then coming in and warming up by the fire.

Now I’m always cold and only the warm bright rays of the summer sun can reach deep enough into my soul to warm me.

Winter approaches and this morning all I can feel is the weight of the past. Thinking about the future is unnerving. Hope lies in the end of winter when the green things kill the season of death with love and life. I think I’m living on assumptions now – assuming I’ll be here to see the end of winter and the beginning of spring. I picture myself holding a yellow tulip in my hand and holding it up and looking at the sun through its petals.

I guess none of knows if we will see the wonder of spring again. Not one of us knows if we will see the sunrise tomorrow or the sunset to know. We make plans on assumptions because assuming we’ll be here tomorrow is the only way we can get through today.

I walk back into the kitchen to get more coffee. I hesitate to look out the dirty kitchen window. I’m afraid the unkindness of ravens will be there swirling around the woods beneath the solemn, gray October sky.

But I look anyway.

The sky is crystal blue and the shadows are long. The unkindness of ravens exists only in my memory now.  And for the first time I see that the trees in the woods are beginning to turn – I see patches of reds, and yellows, and browns and oranges in green canvas of the forest.

I pour another cup of coffee, and with a slight sadness, I begin another day.