As a member of Rave Reviews Book Club, I am proud to showcase several exceptional writers. All are members of the literary section of the club titled Rave Writers – International Society of Authors. RWISA.
Today I want to welcome Mary Adler with her poem Black Notes Beat.
BLACK NOTES BEAT
I have studied and observed crows for years, and the more I’ve learned about them, the more I admire their complex family and flock relationships. They are intelligent, create and use tools, and they teach their skills to other crows. As Rev. Henry Ward Beecher said, “If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.”
Over the years, I have told my family and friends more than they ever wanted to know about crows. One person said, after hearing the stories I told about them, that she stopped trying to run crows down with her car. (There is so much wrong with that statement, that I don’t know where to begin.)
During the non-nesting period of the year, crows gather at night to roost together, sometimes in flocks of thousands. They are stealthy and take a roundabout way to the roosting place. They have good reason to be wary. For decades, humans have killed them, even dynamiting their roosting places at night.
Like many natural creatures, they are good and bad, depending on your viewpoint, and not everyone appreciates their beauty. But I love to watch them streaming across the sky–one small group after another–as they return from foraging to join the flock. When they are together, those who have found a safe source of food will tell the others where it is. They share, but only within their own flock.
One evening, after watching them move across the sky, I wrote this:
Black Notes Beat
Black notes beat
Unfurling dusk
Across the bruising sky.
Quarter notes, half notes
Rise and fall.
Whole notes
Rest on treetops.
An arpeggio of eighth notes
Silently swirls,
Scribing a nocturne
in the fading light.
Softly they spill
to the nighttime roost:
Rustling,
murmuring,
settling,
hushed.
Now the still moment,
the last note fading,
No bows, no curtsies,
No fear of reviews.
They need no applause to perform their works.
Mary Adler
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Thank you for supporting this member along the WATCH “RWISA” WRITE Showcase Tour today! We ask that if you have enjoyed this member’s writing, please visit their Author Page on the RWISA site, where you can find more of their writing, along with their contact and social media links, if they’ve turned you into a fan.
We ask that you also check out their books in the RWISA or RRBC catalogs. Thanks, again, for your support and we hope that you will follow each member along this amazing tour of talent! Don’t forget to click the link below to learn more about this author:
Mary Adler RWISA Author Page
