I am not sure if I am the only one noticing this phenomenon. But on these particularly cold days, when the sky is brilliant blue and the sunshine is blinding in its reflection off the mounds of snow that make up our landscape, flocks of crows are dancing in the sky. They seem to fly in a plenty that is not visible in summer. I watched yesterday as they soared in a dance that seemed to be accompanied by the music on my radio. Up and over, around and down, they formed black lace patterns against a dying day on my way home from work. I watched the flock form an undulating motion as, every now and then, one bird would peel off to land for a rest on a light pole or rooftop.

Perhaps it fascinates me because their posture is so very different from our human ones. Bundled up in down and fleece, our shoulders touch our ears as our lumpy forms plod along. We can seem to dance a penguin dance as we move across the icy pavement. But we all know that this is not a true dance, only a movement that tries to create a safety net that might prevent any real breakage should we fall.

And so the dance of these black, soaring birds elicits some desire of freedom in me. In a poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Crow Says’, she finishes her observation of these common, often raucous tree dwellers. Using the voice of the crow, she writes:

“Well, maybe now and again, and mostly in winter,
I have strange, even painful ruminations.
When you’re hungry and cold
it’s hard to be bold, so I sulk,
and I do have dreams sometimes, in which
I remember the corn will come again,
and vaguely then I feel that I am almost feeling
grateful, to something or other.”

I love the idea that the crows, like me, are remembering that corn will come again. Traveling last weekend through the farm country of Minnesota and Wisconsin, I allowed my eyes to take in all the white fields that in just a few months will be green and tall and waving in the warm breezes. I remembered last summer and the joy I found in driving through just such farmland, reveling in the beauty and bounty of miles and miles of the work of people I did not know but admired still.

In that remembering, my shoulders relaxed and the distance between my shoulders and ears grew. I felt all the tense muscles, held just so out of protection, relax into warmness. I do not have the ability to fly, to dance in beautiful patterns riding on the frigid winds. But, if the poet is correct about crows, we both have a similar sense of gratitude. For the miracle of a sun-cold day and the hope of the corn yet to be. And to the Spirit that moves in it all.