The Raven's Call

on killing

These words are the spiralling thoughts that formed under a sleepless full moon as we enter harvest season and the closing of the shepherding year. I have left them raw, unabridged.

A pair of ravens circle overhead. We think they’ve moved into the forestry above us. He thinks there’s more, they have young. They dance spirals skywards, riding rising thermals high…until they are as small as common crows, and break off east, side by side, black shadows in an azure September sky.

We have seen them pass over our ground often, recently. Wing beats draw our eyes up to the imposing corvids as they pass low overhead, scouting, as though they know that it will soon be killing time, harbingers of death.

The last time we saw a raven was at the butcher’s yard. Perched atop the apex of the house, it watched our approach with gleaming black eyes and stretched its wings as though to proudly show its portentous presence, lord of the boneyard. Have you ever really seen a raven up close? They are a formida…