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so that everyone knows not to treat you in the usual way.

The tattoo I got this summer—

permanent art marking my impermanent body.

A gift to myself—the pain a strange kind of prayer,

making good on my promise to remember

the loving hand of the feminine

always over my heart, having my back.

A huge crow swoops to meet me, his large beak stuttering open.

He croaks his hello, frog-like.

He must be drawn by the bones the dogs have left ’round,

carrion for his dinner.

But it’s me he’s focused on, coaxing me into conversation.

When I respond, he flies closer, perches to stare at me.

Beady black eyes glow fiery against shiny indigo feathers.

He caws in clusters of three, his wings inflating with air

upon each inhale,

Cccaaaawwww, cccaaawww, ccccaaawwww.

My responding calls intrigue him, and we converse.

An arc of connection cuts through the applecrisp autumn air.

He pauses, turning his head to an improbable angle

to suck water through his long thin beak

from the shallow pool

puddled in the cement birdbath.

I wonder is he a bird of sorrow, or a creature of connection?

I know he is both.

I learned this duality from my father, a man whose lionheart

was far too big for the losses his love suffered in its youth.

He was a Jewish man who loaned his collection of Santa Clauses

out to a different shopkeeper each year,

so that his whole West Village neighborhood

could enjoy the riotously diverse yet uniform

red-and-whiteness of them.

His emotional voice was always tentative, feelings muffled

to lessen the risk he took in expressing them—

his loss of love twisted into fearfulness of losing face.

But felt, his affection was a soothing bath that made everything safe,

the sun I basked in when I was small.

Arms I could count on—except for those contracted moments

when the shadow of loss overtook him.

Isn’t it strange, how unspeakably beautiful life becomes

whenever death draws near?

It hovers close now, all the time, with extinctions everywhere,

eighteen hundred species disappearing daily—

my mind reels at it, staggering.

The tundra melting, trees tilting drunkenly as they lose their ground,

entire cultures losing their lifeways, the terrain too erratic

for hunting anymore.

Who mourns these losses?

To enter that one-ness, the kinship of the crow,

we must first feel the pain.

When I knew I’d never have a child, I vowed I’d have myself.

I wept with relief when the wise man told me

I had more children to care for in this life

than I could if I had my own.

How can we close the circle, complete the cycle,

and not go mad with grief?

Afraid I’ll start wailing, I rock inwardly and don’t stop.

My body moves with the sadness in waves that offer me comfort.

My rocking helps to still my maddening mind.

How can we grieve for the vividly colored corals bleached white, for the elephants brutally hunted for their tusks, for all those whose habitats have been logged to make mail-order catalogs, phonebooks, and newspapers?

The crone within me wants to shake us all awake, screeching:

Don’t you get it?

This is no time for small talk

This is a time for mythmaking

This is a time for epic poetry

This is a time to tell the tales of life, love, and resilience

that’ll become our compass for the days ahead.

A time to remember the grace and celebrate the magic

that infuses and informs this world.

We live on the only planet we know of where the sun and moon

appear the same size.

The only planet where an eclipse is possible.

Doesn’t that seem like instructions to you?

To awaken from this self-induced slumber,

to emerge from this contracted isolation,

we’ve got to drink down the darkness

and dive to our deepest fathoms.

Peel off our fancy garments of presumed protection,

to land at the bottom, naked, cold, and bruised,

with nowhere to go but up.

Time we shed the venom that got us here,

the red rage of blame and shame.

And choose instead the anger that rises,

pure and clean, up through