A Deep River Year - 2017

I could smell the restlessness of the soil on the day the sun came out. Bending down and squeezing a ball of dirt in my fist, I crumbled it in the overgrown bed. It was no longer a clump of mud, so I could see that it was time to get out there and rake out last season's remnants: the tangled tomato vines arching over the fence, the sunflower stalks standing like barren trees, the Sweet Annie, swaying in the breeze and fragrant as if it were still green. The blue jays squawked in the top of the pussy willow, eyeing the parcel of ground where they may have suspected I will hide my peas. Or maybe they were scolding the young hawk circling overhead, riding the loveliness of the Spring morning.
The tomato stakes needed to be moved to another spot for this year's garden, but I failed to notice that the large wooden crow adorning one of the stakes had come loose. Suddenly the thing clobbered me on the head. I automatically reached to touch the place where pain had erupted, and felt the blood matting my hair. I could see the crow lying in the dirt, and I wondered whether it was the beak or the wing or the tail that has assaulted me, or whether it just might have been the rusty screw protruding from its belly. Unable to see the wound, I headed into the house to have my nurse/wife look it over. "What did you do?" she asked, seeing the blood on my hand. "A crow hit me," I answered, as if that were no strange thing.


After a tetanus shot at the doctor's office, I headed back to the garden. The crow still lay on the ground, with some of my blood on it. A good way, I guess, to consecrate another garden, another Spring.


Crow Attack


There is rain,
 and there is sun to follow.
 And the wet earth
 readies for the seed
 where wild things already grow.
 I pull the vagrant weed,
 yank at the long dead vines
 claiming the border fence,
 listen to the red-shouldered hawk
 making raucous in the blue sky,
 wondering at me.
 I smile and yank again,
 and an ornamental crow,
 once the guardian of our patch
 from high atop a tomato stake,
 tumbles onto my head.
 There is blood now
 to mingle with the April soil,
 and I have hallowed this place
 where scarlet dahlias will bloom.
 This is a kind of offering,
 a sacrifice we always make
 for what we love.
 I feel the wound,
 the stickiness of my hair,
 and know that I will carry
 a hidden scar of Spring.


--Timothy Haut